Hollywood Just Got a New Giant: Paramount and Warner Bros. Are Officially One Company

$110 billion, one name — Skydance — and a promise of 30 movies a year against $6 billion in cuts. The math is doing a lot of work here.

It's done. On Tuesday, October 6, Paramount completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery in a deal valued at roughly $110 billion including debt — one of the largest media mergers in history. The combined company now operates simply as Skydance, trading on the NYSE under the ticker SKYD, led by chairman and CEO David Ellison with former Mattel chief Ynon Kreiz as co-CEO.

What lives under one roof now: Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures, CBS and CNN, HBO and HBO Max, Paramount+, TNT, TBS, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Discovery, HGTV — plus franchises from Top Gun and The Godfather to Harry Potter and SpongeBob. More than 200 million streaming subscribers across its platforms, by the company's count.

The tension at the center

Two numbers from this week pull in opposite directions. Ellison has promised investors $6 billion in cost savings within three years — and the first staff memo already gestured at layoffs, with CNN staffers reportedly bracing for a "bloodbath." Against that, a five-year settlement with 12 US states (which cleared the final antitrust hurdle on September 30) commits Skydance to at least 30 theatrical releases a year and $1.5 billion in additional US production spending.

Fitch, meanwhile, downgraded both companies' debt ratings on the leverage: Skydance begins life carrying something like $80–90 billion in total debt. Fewer studios commissioning films, more debt to service, and a legal promise to keep making movies anyway. That contradiction is the story to watch — everything else is branding.