Paramount agrees to $28 billion merger with rival company
One of the oldest studios in the industry, and the only major outfit still headquartered in Hollywood, is under new management after Paramount Global agreed a merger with Skydance Media.
Founded in 1912 as the result of a merger between production companies Famous Players, the Lasky Company, and Paramount, the multimedia conglomerate has continued expanding and diversifying its portfolio over the last century. Now, in the biggest evolution in its history, it has changed to the point that the takeover will result in a new firm carrying an estimated net worth of around $28 billion.
Non-executive chairperson Shari Redstone, the daughter of Sumner Redstone, who was responsible for driving Paramount to new heights as part of the ViacomCBS empire, is selling her controlling stake in the company to Skydance. The deal also includes television networks CBS, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and MTV.
Skydance chief David Ellison and his backers will invest $8 billion into the takeover, which begins in earnest with the acquisition of the National Amusements entity founded by Sumner Redstone which controlled close to 80 per cent of Paramount’s voting shares, with a full merger to follow.
Ellison will serve as the new company’s chairman and CEO, with ex-NBCUniversal boss Jeff Shell acting as its president, with the deal expected to be closed in the first six months of 2025. In a statement, Skydance outlined plans to “reposition Paramount to improve profitability, foster stability and independence for creators, and enable more investment in faster growing digital platforms.”
The two titans joining forces doesn’t come completely out of the blue, with Skydance and Paramount having worked together for over a decade co-financing several of the latter’s most lucrative franchises including Mission: Impossible, Transformers, and Top Gun, while Pixar pioneer John Lasseter’s involvement with Skydance will see the new outfit seek to become a major player in animated features.
With a vast back catalogue of content covering the past, present, and future of cinema – which extends to The Godfather, Chinatown, the Star Trek universe, Forrest Gump, and Shrek among others – Skydance will be seeking to arrest an alarming decline that saw the value of Paramount Global shares drop by 75 per cent over the last five years despite the introduction of in-house streaming service Paramount+.
The merger has the potential to reverberate around the entire entertainment business and not just Hollywood looking at how wide-ranging Paramount’s assets are across several different mediums, with the Redstone family’s decades-long association with the company entering its final stretch as the new management and corporate structure begins to take shape behind the scenes.
Earlier this year it was revealed that Paramount have begun planning Top Gun 3. Although the movie is still years away from hitting cinema screens, executives will be expecting the Tom Cruise project to help kickstart the new era of the company.
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