Paramount Closes Its Warner Bros. Takeover: What the New Skydance Means for Working Folks

Hollywood got a whole lot smaller at the top on Tuesday. Skydance-owned Paramount closed its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, and the combined company now runs under one name: Skydance. The Associated Press called it an $81 billion takeover, nearly $111 billion once debt is counted, while CBS News and the BBC put it at $110 billion. The company's announcement has the details.

What ended up under one roof

CBS News reports the deal unites the studios behind "The Godfather" and the "Harry Potter" films, the newsrooms at CBS News and CNN, channels like Nickelodeon and TNT, and both Paramount+ and HBO Max. David Ellison runs it with co-CEO Ynon Kreiz, the former head of Mattel. "Today is a historic day, not just for Skydance but for our entire industry," Ellison said.

How it got here

It was a rough road. AP recounts that Warner first had a deal with Netflix before Paramount's hostile bid won out. In July, attorneys general from 12 states sued to block the merger, and the Writers Guild of America sued too. September settlements cleared the way. Per CBS News, the company pledged to make 30 films in each of the first two years and not to sell or close the Paramount or Warner Bros. lots in Los Angeles for at least five years. AP says it also committed millions of dollars to a fund for workers displaced by the merger.

Why working folks should care

Here is the line that matters if you build sets or pull cable for a living. Ellison and Kreiz told employees they are targeting $6 billion in cost savings and wrote that "integrating two companies will bring change, including difficult decisions that affect our workforce." For an independent outfit like MuddySouth Music, it is one more reminder that the big rooms keep getting bigger, so the little ones have to work harder and stay close to the people who actually listen.

Out on the back steps

We caught a MuddySouth Music producer on the studio's back steps during a lunch break, near the tail end of an interview that had already wandered from taxes to turbo setups. Asked about the merger, he came at it sideways. Everybody swears Hell runs hot, he said, so does that leave Heaven cold? He will be the first to tell you his pockets are not full of answers for every question somebody throws his way. What he does carry is this: good folks have spent their whole lives, and some gave those lives up, keeping this country rolling, free, and under God, and no merger, market, or headline, good or bad, is going to change that. Then somebody hollered that the next session was waiting. Busy day in the studio.

From my desk to yours

I write these so you get the news in plain words, but the best things MuddySouth Music has coming will not run on any network, old or new. We have big outreach and more chances to hang with the fans planned this year, and the folks on our contact list hear about it before anybody else. No studio boss decides who gets in; you just add your name. Do it while it is on your mind, and bring a friend along. Thanks for reading, y'all. I will be back with another one tomorrow.

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