David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance makes its bullish pitch to Hollywood

In a Hollywood that’s in the midst of economic contraction, a large part of Paramount’s appeal to producers and talent is the stability of its financing, which came primarily from Ellison’s father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who invested $6 billion, and a consortium of other investors, including the private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners.

On Nov. 10, Ellison is set to deliver his first earnings call as CEO, where he’s expected to articulate the studio’s strategy and financial outlook just weeks after Paramount Skydance began laying off what is expected to be some 2,000 employees.

Ellison has touted the technological sophistication he plans to bring to the studio, underpinned by Oracle’s computing platform and by AI.

“We’re not going to be afraid of technology; we’re going to embrace it,” Ellison said during a press conference in New York after the Paramount deal closed in August.

In meetings with talent in recent weeks, Paramount executives have shared a little more, talking up the company’s ability to find audiences for their films and shows among increasingly distracted consumers, in part by relying on targeted AI marketing tools.

The breathless pace of deal making, which has kept Paramount lawyers working through weekends to pore over contracts, comes as Ellison is actively bidding to own yet another Hollywood studio, Warner Bros. Discovery.

Many industry sources are wary of that deal coming together, saying they fear it could lead to more layoffs, less spending and a homogenization of the kinds of TV shows and films that get made. Some point, grimly, to when Disney bought Fox in 2019, laid off 3,000 people and drastically reduced the number of Fox films that go into theaters.

“If the movies are all coming from one company, how many risks are you willing to take?” asked Daniel Loria, senior vice president of the Boxoffice Company, a theatrical ecommerce and data services firm. “We’re just coming off of the Disney/Fox merger where we saw that one plus one equals a lot less than two.”

When asked about a possible Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery deal, one head of a midsize theater chain said he was “concerned.”

“You have to assume there would be a significant reduction in output,” he said. “It’s not good for movie theaters, it’s not good for consumers.”

Others in the industry have also raised alarms about the deal potentially leading to fewer opportunities. In a statement in October, the Writers Guild of America called the prospect of a Paramount-WBD deal “a disaster for writers, for consumers, and for competition” and vowed to work with regulators to block the merger.

But Ellison has been pitching his company as a boon to theaters and moviegoers. He’s said he wants Paramount to produce 20 films a year, up from its current production of 11-14 films per year, and that if he succeeds in buying Warner Bros., the two companies combined would produce 30 films a year, matching their current output.

To get to that level of production, Paramount has been in expansion mode, signing a three-year distribution pact with Legendary Entertainment that will start with a 2026 “Street Fighter” movie and a 10-year lease for more than 285,000 square feet of production space in Bayonne, New Jersey.

Ellison has filled out his executive team, enlisting Skydance’s Dana Goldberg as co-chair of Paramount Pictures and chair of Paramount Television, former Sony executive Josh Greenstein as co-chair of Paramount Pictures and vice chair of Platforms, and former Netflix VP Cindy Holland as chair of direct-to-consumer.

Paramount is even dipping into genres that have largely disappeared from theaters over the past decade, like original R-rated comedies— the studio bought a spec script for one called “Bald Eagles.”