Wall Street and the mogul class are winning, even as the working class in the business are holding their breath. Paramount, after all, shed 10 percent of its workforce after the Skydance takeover, and with $6 billion in synergies targeted after it eats Warners, significant cuts totaling thousands of employees are once again in the cards for both companies as they merge.
Ellison has used his post-deal comments to emphasize that the company only wants to expand production, citing a promise to release 30 theatrical films a year and to continue as a buyer and seller of TV shows. But a slew of previous mergers have left the creative class skeptical, to say the least.
And after years of production pullbacks, there are signals that it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Call it a Hollywood of haves and have-nots.
Paramount Skydance’s pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery will create a trio (alongside Netflix and Disney) of global entertainment giants, while the tech giants Amazon, YouTube and Meta are encroaching farther on territory that was once the realm of legacy media. New kings of Hollywood, from Ellison and Sarandos to YouTube’s Neal Mohan and Disney’s Josh D’Amaro, will benefit, while others figure out how to proceed without their scale.
“The transformation that’s happening in our business today, it’s massive,” laments a C-suite level executive at a company that’s been left out of that top tier. Their company, and others in a similar situation, are evaluating their options.
“I wish we lived in a benign world. We live in a world where Silicon Valley is coming,” says one trusted industry leader and adviser. “There’s a virtue to consolidation and scale. It’s true in any industry that is being technologically disintermediated.”
The result for many of the companies left out is smaller ambitions, and in some cases, a sales process. A+E Global Media is on the market, while Lionsgate executives are touting their “scarce asset” in chats about dealmaking. NBCUniversal CEO Mike Cavanagh told a conference in March that “domestic is our path” for Peacock, underscoring the pared-back moment.
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