David Ellison, CEO of Paramount Skydance, made his first formal appearance in front of Warner Bros. Discovery‘s senior ranks Tuesday, talking about Paramount’s pending $111 billion deal for WBD and taking about a dozen questions from the assemblage.
The meeting kicked off with Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav introducing Ellison. About 160 execs were in attendance at the Steven J. Ross Theater on Warner’s studio lot in Burbank, with another 300-plus participating via videoconference.
Ellison spoke for about 10 minutes about the deal, reiterating points he has made before publicly, including that he expects the combined Paramount-Warner Bros. to be able to produce 30 films per year (15 from each studio). He also praised HBO as “the gold standard in television,” according to an individual with knowledge of his remarks.
At the end of his opening remarks, Ellison said that he understood that the M&A battle that WBD has been locked in for the past several months — after Netflix sealed a deal for WB’s studios and streaming ops in December, only to have Paramount come in with the winning bid two weeks ago — has been “a turbulent process.” But, he added, “that part is behind us,” sources said.
Ellison then took questions from the Warner Bros. Discovery execs. He was asked how many layoffs Paramount expects to make at WBD, especially in light of the deep cuts that Paramount Skydance has made after that deal closed. Ellison reiterated that Paramount sees upwards of $6 billion in cost savings as a result of the merger; while he could not provide an estimate on the number of jobs cuts in the offing, he claimed that most of the cost synergies would not come from layoffs.
“My take was, he was pretty honest and direct,” one WBD exec who attended said. “He came off as genuine.” While “people wanted more specificity” about layoffs and the new operating structure going forward, this source added, Paramount is restricted from making those kinds of detailed plans because of “gun-jumping” prohibitions during a pre-merger period.
During the Q&A session, moderated by Warner Bros. Discovery head of communications Robert Gibbs, Ellison was asked about the proposed combination of HBO Max and Paramount+; Ellison responded that he wanted to talk to the teams at both companies about what the merged streaming business would look like.
In addition, there was a question about Ellison’s plans for CNN going forward. Ellison echoed comments he made last week, saying that the news outlet would remain editorially independent.
One Warner Bros. attendee came away from Ellison’s talk with the impression that “it was good there were no surprises.”
A source on the Paramount side said they got good feedback from Ellison’s WBD presentation, with some remarking on Ellison’s breadth of knowledge across the biz.
Paramount has said it expects the WBD deal to close in the third quarter of 2026. The company has agreed to pay a “ticking fee” of 25 cents per share to shareholders for every quarter the deal isn’t completed after that.
