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Skydance's Warner Bros takeover leaves Hollywood talent with four major studios to pitch
Skydance now owns Warner Bros and Paramount, cutting Hollywood's major studios from five to four and putting HBO, CBS and CNN under one owner. Writers and directors feel the lost buyer first, while cable distributors and streaming subscribers meet the combined company later.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
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What happened
- A group of state attorneys general dropped their lawsuit to block the merger after Skydance agreed to concessions, including an oversight board with Ellison appointees.
- Pay TV rights and the channel fees charged to cable companies must still be negotiated separately, as if Warner and Paramount had not merged.
- HBO Max and Paramount+ will eventually merge into a single streaming service, on a timeline that has not been disclosed.
- Skydance removed Warner film co-chairs Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca, who noted on their way out that they were leaving the studio with 39 movies.
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Why it matters
- decision Producers with projects set up under Abdy and De Luca now depend on whoever Skydance puts in charge of Warner's film slate to get those films made.
- constraint While the separate-negotiation term applies, Skydance cannot pool Warner and Paramount channels in one cable fee negotiation, so the merger adds little leverage over carriers yet.
- cost Paramount+ subscribers, on one of the cheaper services today, would move to a combined price the Guardian expects to be not much less than $25 a month, possibly far more.
Sony, Disney and Universal are now the only major studios besides Skydance [1]. Netflix had come close to buying Warner before Skydance outbid it [7]. One transaction removed a fifth of the large buyers for a script or a finished film [18]. A producer shopping a project now has one fewer major studio to bid against the others.
The release calendar will not show the change for a while. The Guardian expects no major immediate changes to Warner's schedule, with 2026 closing on Clayface, The Cat in the Hat and Dune 3 [8]. Warner's 2027 films already well into production include new Superman, Ocean's, Minecraft and Godzilla/Kong entries, plus original projects from M Night Shyamalan and JJ Abrams [9]. Paramount has new Sonic the Hedgehog, Paranormal Activity and Quiet Place films coming [10]. Movies chosen by the combined company will reach cinemas after that slate [9].
Cable distributors meet the merger later, by design. Because of the separate-negotiation term in the settlement, a carriage renewal signed this quarter is still struck with two sellers [4]. The Guardian describes many of the concessions as keeping business as usual for parts of the companies [11]. A later renewal could be negotiated with a single counterparty for all ten channels the Guardian names, including TNT, Showtime, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, if that term has stopped applying by then [16][19]. The reporting does not say how long the term runs, and it does not cover advertising sales, so how media buyers fare under one owner cannot be judged from it.
The governance concessions face a sharper objection. The Guardian wrote that the board "has been cold comfort" [12]. It points to Ellison's closeness to Donald Trump, who has long complained about CNN's supposed biases [13]. It also points to CBS News, where it says Bari Weiss has overseen a dip in ratings and prestige for 60 Minutes [20]. Skydance has insisted CNN will remain editorially independent, chair Mark Thompson stays for now, and Weiss is not expected to take on the network [6][14]. I think the Guardian's objection is the stronger one. The pledge and the board both come from the owner they are meant to restrain [3][6].
Layoffs were left out of the settlement entirely [15]. The Guardian expects casual viewers to notice little at first, while people working in the industry feel plenty of impact, direct and indirect [17].
What to watch
- The date Skydance sets for combining HBO Max and Paramount+, and the monthly price it puts on the merged service.
- How long the settlement's requirement to negotiate pay TV rights and channel fees separately lasts, and what governs carriage talks after it.
- Who Skydance names to run Warner's film studio, and how many of the 39 projects Abdy and De Luca left behind survive the transition.