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Paramount completes $111B Warner merger, creating "Skydance" behemoth

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/10/paramount-completes-111b-warner-merger-creating-skydance-behemoth/
68•Mgtyalx•1h ago

Comments

b0rtb0rt•56m ago
so does this mean i get paramount plus for free with my hbo?
throw03172019•52m ago
It means they are going to raise prices for both platforms because they can.
fooqux•46m ago
And then everything else will follow suit. Not that they haven't already been doing just that.
2muchcoffeeman•17m ago
Everybody just stop subscribing and do something else and pirate the shit out of their content.
greyw•51m ago
If it makes them more money
rylando•50m ago
Free? I don’t think a monopoly knows the meaning of that word
Hamuko•32m ago
It means that Paramount Plus is saddled with debt, and HBO is saddled with debt. And that someone needs to pay off that debt.
kwanbix•51m ago
Yes! What the consumer needs! Less competition! Hurrah!

Sorry for the sarcasm.

stavros•37m ago
Less regulation means more innovation!
roroh4310•25m ago
I will believe this internet comment. Thanks!
stavros•23m ago
It is in your best interest. All this innovation is sure to mean better quality of life for the average person, and not at all a widening of the income gap.
smashah•46m ago
How much did the Gulf states pledge towards this?
optimalsolver•46m ago
From what I see on r/stablediffusion, Hollywood has maybe 2 years left, in the optimistic case.
fooqux•44m ago
Even if it gets good enough, you're forgetting about everything else that goes into movie making and distribution. Hollywood will keep their hold on media, they just might use AI to increase profits even higher.
john_strinlai•40m ago
i am extremely wary of making any predictions about ai, given what's happened in the last year, but i would put good money on hollywood being around in 2 years. there's much more to the movie industry than slapping some video together.

r/stablediffusion seems to be a bit disconnected from reality, to put it nicely.

beanjuiceII•38m ago
ehhhh i dunno about that. the stuff i've seen from people, and watched looks much better than most crap hollywood puts out anymore
john_strinlai•37m ago
to reiterate: there is more to the movie industry than putting a video together
foobarian•23m ago
The vibe I get is like when the Meta VR app store product launched, and there was huge promises and optimism about all the amazing apps and experiences, but when you bought it and actually tried, it was a few juiced up flagship things and a bunch of shovelware.
Hikikomori•43m ago
Another nail in Americas coffin.
stock_toaster•33m ago
Yet another oligarchy centralization play. I assume more to come.
cdrnsf•41m ago
So when do they raise prices and start laying folks off?
cmorgan31•39m ago
They already acknowledged layoffs so likely within 30 days the cull list will be presented to senior leadership.
toomuchtodo•37m ago
Their debt load is enormous due to how quickly debt costs have risen from M&A talks to issuing the debt.

https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/skydance-credit-rating-down...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-01/paramount... | https://archive.today/SEtX9

cdrnsf•5m ago
I'm sure they'll figure that out.
brnt•37m ago
Do we really need two Ellisons?
thinkingtoilet•26m ago
trebligdivad•39m ago
When do we get Bugs Bunny on the Enterprise ?
wccrawford•8m ago
I'm not even mad. Let's do it. With Marvin the Martian.

They had a Lower Decks cartoon crossover already, so they can't even deny the possibility now.

bigwheels•38m ago
Can this be undone in the future if folks realize it was too monopolistic and it was in fact an anti-trust violation?

I wonder if David Ellison is a fun guy IRL.

Y_Y•36m ago
He has a nice yacht, I bet it's fun on the yacht.
yolp5•15m ago
Probably not if you're an underage girl though.
fhub•9m ago
Are you insinuating something about David Ellison here?
yolp5•8m ago
It's one big club
Hamuko•34m ago
Seems to me that these companies will say pretty much whatever during the merger process, and as long as there's no concrete repercussions written down somewhere, just do whatever since it's much harder to break a company apart than it is to block a merger.
bigwheels•29m ago
The pre-merger settlement approved by the current supreme court was that Skydance would: (1) Agree to production quota of 30 movies per year, (2) Domestic spending commitments, and (3) Separate cable package negotiations.

Assets: TNT, CBS, CNN, MTV, TCM, Showtime, Adult Swim, DC Studios, Paramount+, Nickelodeon, HBO/HBO Max, Comedy Central, Cartoon Network

Film Rights: Star Trek, Gremlins, Beetlejuice, DC Comics, Tom & Jerry, Harry Potter, Citizen Kane, Transformers, A Quiet Place, Looney Tunes, The Conjuring, Mortal Kombat, Game of Thrones, Dora The Explorer, Mission Impossible, The Lord of the Rings, SpongeBob SquarePants, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dune 3, Minecraft, MonsterVerse

Remember that Citizen Kane is the movie about a media tycoon who buys everything he can and ends up alone in a mansion full of stuff.

cheesecakegood•36m ago
So they’ve committed to for example releasing 30-32 movies a year for the next five years [1] but after that, no promises. Good thing mergers are famously temporary and we never need to worry about the next 10 years! Oh wait…

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/09/25/paramount-hollywood-prom...

blakesterz•36m ago
First it was Time in 1990, then AOL then AT&T then Discovery and now this. That's 5 owners since 90 for Warner Brothers and none of those really worked out well. I don't know enough to know if this stands a better chance, but if I was going to bet, I'd bet Warner has a new owner before 2030.
chasing•32m ago
You have to admit that David Ellison is extremely talented at being born to one of the wealthiest people in human history.
xnx•31m ago
Seems fine. There are more options for entertainment than ever. Often these mergers don't work out anyway.
ramon156•19m ago
how exactly do they "not work out"? its two behemoths merging for the sake of more money
prometheus1992•26m ago
not a fan of CNN, but a very right leaning person is the owner of CNN now. pre-dictatorship vibes!!
Waterluvian•22m ago
I don’t follow the sentiment.

Right wing people have repeatedly captured and destroyed journalism outlets they deem undesirable. Not that I’m saying CNN is any good.

nomel•17m ago
Do you think only left leaning perspectives should be reported?

There should be a diverse leaning of news companies, otherwise you'll only get half truths. You can't expect a left leaning news org to report anything bad about the left, or right leaning news org to present anything bad about the right. The left will be motivated to find flaws in the right, and the right will be motivated to find flaws in the left. That's a good thing. I believe an adversarial system is required to find truth. A center leaning news org is nice, but they may be motivated to keep their reporting "even", to not appear biased, which isn't really possible with the tick tock of republican and democrat leadership.

A for-profit news org changing leadership/alignment, in a response to massively falling profits [1], isn't a sign of dictatorship, it's a sign of them being aligned to the reason they exist: making moneys.

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cnn-net-worth-sliced-half-192...

nextstep•12m ago
Do you have an example of left-leaning reporting that is mass media in the US?
reliabilityguy
simonw•16m ago
Nilay Patel: https://www.theverge.com/podcast/1004286/senator-adam-schiff...

> One of the longest-running tropes at The Verge is that a workable antitrust policy for the United States would be simply to forbid companies from buying Time Warner because it has never worked and it may never work again, and that we should just pass one law.

Checks out:

Jan 11, 2001: AOL and Time Warner merged to create AOL Time Warner

June 14, 2018: AT&T acquired Time Warner, renamed WarnerMedia

April 8, 2022: WarnerMedia spun out of AT&T, merged with Discovery

dkobia•14m ago
A behemoth indeed but the numbers also tell an interesting story. For TV screen share, Youtube has ~13% of total US viewing time vs ~6% for Paramount/Warner. They also go into this merger with staggering debt which does not bode well.
Papazsazsa•7m ago
I've seen plenty of negative (and legitimate) sentiment around this merger but I'm cautiously optimistic that David Ellison, being half the age of anyone else with greenlight authority, will do something different/better.
Do we even need one?
superxpro12•34m ago
Its so weird how these layoffs somehow targeted every left wing news organization or show. We just cant be certain how that happened. oh well
scun•4m ago
Nothing on that list should have lived this long.
nutjob2•15m ago
If the Trumps get their cut, you're golden.
yolp5•14m ago
> Can this be undone in the future if folks realize it was too monopolistic and it was in fact an anti-trust violation?

I predict the democrats winning, shoving it all under that table and pushing for "reconciliation" and "moving forward" while continuing the rotten status quo that got Trump elected in the first place. Maybe a few token prosecutions of low level wage workers involved.

•
9m ago
WaPo, NYT, The Atlantic, NPR, and many others.
sailfast•6m ago
[delayed]
penskymaterial•7m ago
Yes, all of them, minus the ones you can count on one hand that's missing a few fingers from a fireworks mishap.
prometheus1992•11m ago
>>Do you think only left leaning perspectives should be reported?

No! but where did you get that from?

There is Fox news, X, and Truth socia for right leaning perspectives.

jasondigitized•10m ago
In a alternative universe, a very wealthy person starts a not for profit news agency and gives zero f's how many eyeballs it gets. Hires an army of world class journalists, investigators, and producers to churn out high quality, vetted, in depth content. Does this exist?

Mistral Large 4

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Paramount completes $111B Warner merger, creating "Skydance" behemoth

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/10/paramount-completes-111b-warner-merger-creating-skyda...
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