Skydance co-CEOs David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz told employees Tuesday that the newly merged company will make “difficult decisions,” invest aggressively in storytelling and use technology to compete with the world’s largest tech firms, in the first town hall since the $110 billion Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery deal closed.
- Ellison said the merger, three years in the making, was not about getting bigger but about building a company that can compete with the largest technology firms for attention.
- He said the combined company will make “difficult decisions,” invest aggressively in storytelling, embrace new technology and reject managing decline.
- Ellison reaffirmed support for movies, television, theatrical exhibition, journalism, live sports and shared cultural experiences, citing the studios, franchises, libraries, talent and scale now under one roof.
- Kreiz set three goals: become the premier Hollywood content engine, accelerate streaming growth with better content, technology and fan experience, and optimize the profitable linear TV business anchored by CBS.
- He said Skydance will lean on creative relationships, production capacity and intellectual property, build a more technologically capable company, and use its scale and global reach.
- Kreiz urged employees to operate as one team, challenge conventions and develop new businesses, products, games and experiences, with success measured by execution in a competitive market.
A flashpoint for the merger has been the future at CNN. This is the fifth deal CNN and the former Turner properties have endured over the last 30 years, following Discovery in 2022, AT&T in 2018, AOL in 2001 and Time Warner in 1996, when Turner itself ceased being a purely hometown company.
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, each deal has shrunk the size of the company’s Atlanta employee base, historically by about 1,000, according to estimates from Ethan Tussey, an associate professor and associate dean of Georgia State University’s College of the Arts.
By the numbers:
- $111 billion: Total value of the deal
- $70 billion: Annual revenue Skydance is expected to generate
- $52 billion: The new debt financing Paramount lined up to finance the deal
- $8 billion: The estimated value of the Turner networks under Skydance, which are among the most valuable in its portfolio, according to Geetha Ranganathan, a senior industry analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence.
- $6 billion: The savings the deal is expected to generate, through optimizing the combined real estate footprint, consolidating resource planning systems and streaming technology stacks and other corporatewide efficiencies
- 3,000: Estimated number of Skydance employees based in Atlanta in 2026, according to Tussey’s estimates