Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison wasted no time in detailing his post-merger plans.
Last time we checked, Paramount Skydance made Warner Bros. Discovery take a step back after upping its offer (nearly $18 billion more than Netflix’s offer) to own WBD outright to $108 billion. What a difference a couple of months makes. After a trip to Europe and a public back-and-forth over which deal was better for shareholders, Netflix announced that it was no longer pursuing this purchase. “We’ve always been disciplined,” read Netflix’s statement, “and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid.” This effectively crowned the Ellison family victors. But, before the ink has dried on the deal—it still needs to clear the regulators—Paramount CEO David Ellison has already started detailing his plans for Paramount and HBO on a Monday morning earnings call.
If your gut is telling you that this is only going to get worse, we understand. If Paramount’s current crop of content isn’t getting you hype, it may be hard to believe that it will be the answer for the issues Warner Bros Discovery has been facing, or did you not see that WBD lost $252 million in Q4 2025? Word is the merged company will be operating with approximately $79 million in debt, and a $6 billion consolidation effort to decrease overhead.
But maybe we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Maybe Ellison’s plan is just what WBD needs. Let’s take a look at what Ellison has shared regarding Paramount Skydance’s plans for HBO and the rest of the WBD properties.
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One Platform to Serve ‘Em All
The biggest headline from Ellison’s remarks on Monday was his plan to combine the Paramount+ and HBO Max streaming services into one platform, which would represent over 200 million subscribers. (Netflix had 325 million paid subscribers at the end of 2025.)
“We think that really positions us to compete with the leaders in the space,” Ellison said. “We think the combined offering, and given the amount of content and what we can do from the tech side, really will put us in a position to be able to compete with the most scaled players in DTC.”
Now, that may be true. That’s a massive pool of subscribers, but that’s also a massive amount of content said subscribers will need to sift through. It’s also very early and they likely aren’t ready to fully reveal their hand. But keep in mind that WBD flip-flopped on their streaming service multiple times, remember? It was HBO Max, then just Max before re-adding the HBO. Maybe putting all of that content onto Paramount+ (or whatever the platform may be named when the dust settles) and having an HBO tile is more their speed.
MAKE HBO HBO AGAIN
Ellison went on record as saying that Game of Thrones is his favorite HBO IP. He clearly has faith in CEO Casey Bloys and the team over at HBO, and seemingly intends on letting them do them. “Casey and his team do absolutely a remarkable job at HBO,” Ellison said, adding that HBO would be able to operate independently. “Our viewpoint is HBO should stay HBO. They built a phenomenal brand. They are a leader in the space, and we just want them to continue doing more of it.”
Actually, Ellison said something else that may better spell things out: “By bringing the platforms together, all of our content will be able to reach even a broader audience than we can do standalone.” This may be the true reason for the season: bring them in with Game of Thrones and Euphoria and hope they stick around for…Fallout?
The Dirty 30
That’s just their streaming products. One of Ellison’s bigger talking points was regarding theatrical releases where he continueed to maintain his stance. “As we have said consistently,” Ellison shared on the call, “we are committed to delivering a broad pipeline of high-quality storytelling, including 15 theatrical films per year per studio, for a total of at least 30 films, annually.” Paramount currently has 15 films set to be released in 2026, up from the eight they put in theaters in 2025, but Warner Bros. only put out 11 films in 2025. Paramount’s 2026 schedule of releases features the returns of the Scary Movie, Angry Birds, and Jackass franchises, a new Paw Patrol film, and a 3D Billie Eilish concert film. Its most anticipated release may be the upcoming Street Fighter film, which is basically doing battle with Warner Bros.’ Mortal Kombat 2, one of the shining stars of a 2026 slate that’s mostly full of films for the distribution-only deals they’ve done.
Basically, if Ellison’s popcorn dreams of his production houses churning out 15 releases a year each are to come true, he’s going to have to put some pep in the Warners’ step (or at last do a deeper mining of IP and swing for the fences). Funny enough, two of the most talked-about productions from 2025, Sinners and One Battle After Another, are doing their damn thing on the awards season circuit. Both films were left unmentioned during Ellison’s call, instead choosing to focus on the successes of Superman and The Minecraft Movie. That could be for any number of reasons, but ultimately, it should show you what Ellison is looking for: brighter, shinier sure-things that they can pump bigger budgets into.
“When you look at the theatrical space, which is something we deeply, deeply believe in, large franchises and big pieces of intellectual property are launched in theaters, period,” Ellison explained. “I personally learned this lesson in 2022. We basically had the largest theatrical box office film with ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ which became a cultural phenomenon, grossing $1.5 billion.” Later, Ellison doubled down on his theatrical intentions, explaining, “we said from Day 1, when we acquired Paramount, that we weren’t going to be in the business of making movies directly for streaming.”
Just think about how this would actually work on the ground. There are 12 months in a year; that means each studio would have to put out roughly two films a month for this to even make sense. Can Paramount afford to market every film properly, every month? And again, this is the same Warner Bros. that wanted to shelve the Coyote vs. Acme in order to claim a $30 million tax loss. Maybe Ellison can force Warner Bros. to say yes to a lot of things it would normally say no to.
So, for real, what now?
Everything starts now. Paramount Skydance bullied its way into this deal, and now it will have to navigate a mountain of debt and a theatrical business that still hasn’t fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic. Could Ellison pull it off? With the right political backing and enough Saudi investments, he could likely make anything happen. Will this ultimately save Warner Bros. Discovery from inevitable doom? That’s a trickier question, especially since Sarandos admitted that going through this ordeal has opened doors with Netflix and theater owners.
“One thing that’s been great about it is getting to know and having open dialogue with the theater owners. I really didn’t have much reason to before,” Sarandos said. “I think we’re going [to] find a bunch of cool things to do together going forward. I could see us doing things that we haven’t done before.”
Paramount may have won the battle, but by making Netflix step out and fight, they could have given Sarandos the tools to win the war.
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