Paramount Skydance completes $110B Warner Bros. Discovery merger; Skydance (SKYD) begins trading
What happened
Paramount Skydance completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery this week — reported at about $110 billion including debt — and the combined company, named Skydance, began trading on the NYSE under ticker SKYD. David Ellison is chairman and CEO with former Mattel chief Ynon Kreiz as co-CEO; David Zaslav, who led WBD since 2022, stepped down, while CNN chief Mark Thompson was asked to stay. The combination unites Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. as two film studios, CBS and CNN as news networks, and Paramount+ and HBO Max under one roof, with a committed slate of at least 30 theatrical films and more than 180 TV shows and series per year. Netflix, which lost the bidding war in February, collected a $2.8 billion termination fee funded by Paramount.
Why it matters & what’s next are part of Pro, along with the audio summary.
Start your free 14-day trialWho’s affected
- Skydance (SKYD) — the new combined entity, now carrying $80B+ in debt
- Netflix (NFLX) — new scaled streaming/studio competitor; walked away with the $2.8B breakup fee but faces a bigger rival
- Disney (DIS), Comcast — studio/streaming competitors in a consolidating Hollywood
- Paramount+/Max subscriber economics vs. Netflix's 325M+ paid memberships