At a party in DC last week, I got to talking with a media executive in line for the bar about what the landscape might look like in the coming years. He predicted countless small indie outlets catering to highly niche audiences…“and then David Ellison’s Skynet,” he deadpanned.
The Terminator reference was the kind of thing CGI-explosions fanatic Ellison might actually appreciate. And the joke being dropped at a defense-tech event in DC goes to show just how many different industries, from tech to politics, are keeping an eye on the M&A drama unfolding in Hollywood this month.
The pending merger could bring dozens of media properties, including Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., HBO, and CBS, all under one roof (with TikTok, Oracle, and other Silicon Valley ties at an arm’s reach via David’s father, billionaire Larry Ellison). “We’re using technology to transform every single aspect of this business,” the younger Ellison told CNBC last week.
To execute that mission, Paramount hired Dane Glasgow as its chief product officer. Glasgow brings years of executive experience at companies like Meta and Google and holds over 50 issued or pending patents in areas like search, data mining, and commerce. He’ll surely be tasked with plenty of boring back-end stuff like consolidating the studios’ workflows under Oracle-backed systems, given that Oracle has reportedly been in talks to provide cloud software for Paramount Skydance. But you can also count on him to put that Big Tech experience to work on AI-driven personalization and targeted advertising.
As for the streaming side, you can expect to find all of Ellison’s properties—from CNN to MTV—on a single app. Some industry insiders fear that all this consolidation could diminish the work of prestige brands like HBO, which Ellison calls his “crown jewel.”
And then there’s the multibillion-dollar AI question. Ellison himself insists that he sees AI “as a tool for artists” and a “force multiplier,” not “a replacement for human creativity.” Those are the kinds of terms the actors and writers guilds will be pushing to formalize in their contract negotiations this spring.
With the help of these tech-driven efficiencies, Ellison has promised to release 30 films per year between the two studios—all of which he says will receive a full theatrical release. While Paramount didn’t exactly clean up during this year’s awards season, I spoke with a veteran awards consultant who said she’s not counting it out just yet. “People don’t always lead with their chin about awards,” she told me. “The movies have got to open and make money for these guys with their business model, and then go from there.” A source close to the company told me that while Paramount did disband its small awards team in the fall, it could reevaluate post-merger and either rehire these awards roles or outsource them to specialized external agencies.
AI could also unlock new potential for WBD’s treasure trove of IP, from Harry Potter to DC Comics. For that potential, Ellison and company are paying a hefty $110 billion—a number that was driven up by a fierce bidding war with Netflix. “I find it really telling that Larry Ellison is basically buying the most frontier edge investment you can make in AI data centers, and then also the oldest and most resilient thing in Superman,” said John Coogan, cohost of the Los Angeles–based tech podcast TBPN. Ellison, he argued, is placing bets that are both “long slop and anti-slop.”
But not everyone is convinced by this strategy. Paramount Skydance is “doing it by taking on almost unspeakably massive quantities of debt. It’s basically like a private equity deal,” former Democratic FTC commissioner Alvaro Bedoya told me Monday. “And what happens with private equity is you need to show a cleaned-up ledger and balance sheet. And the easiest way to do that is to lay people off, because people are expensive.” A representative for Paramount claims that layoff fears are overblown, telling Vanity Fair, “Synergies will be achieved by six key areas—jobs are not the majority.”
