Skydance Now Owns Warner Bros and Paramount, and DC's James Gunn Reports Directly to Ellison

The Warner Bros and Paramount merger is complete, and the parent company of these two behemoths is simply called Skydance. James Gunn has his own place on the new org chart, reporting directly to David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz. I thought it might be too early to discuss the deal, especially because I am waiting to hear whether executives will be hired to oversee individual IP, but I am surprised how much there is to say.

Skydance Takes Over Warner Bros in a Rough Week

What a week to acquire Warner Bros. Last year, Warner Bros "was the prettiest girl at the dance," but this week Digger kicked off the weekend by crashing and burning. Then on Sunday Lanterns, which was supposed to be DC's reprieve, crashed and burned at the last minute.

I think everybody had thought there would be a combined name or that the company would pick one, but instead it went with Skydance. Variety ran a headline about the Warner Bros water tower being repainted, and I assumed the logo had been replaced. All they did was write Skydance Corporation under it. The way I see it, David Ellison is wearing the gauntlet and all of these companies are the stones.

Wall Street and $80 Billion in Debt Will Drive Skydance

An industry friend and I agreed that Paramount was too small to exist as it was, but now it feels like the company has gone the opposite way and become way too big. Netflix is a very streamlined company, and Wall Street gets angry whenever it strays from that model. Disney grew slowly over decades. To snap your fingers and Frankenstein two studios together, "It's going to be gruesome." But it might end up being a scientific breakthrough.

I think it is very telling that the official announcement emphasized the Skydance stock. A studio needs to be this big because Wall Street needs it to be, and shareholders fire CEOs who do not create value. The company is saddled with $80 billion in debt, a figure that seems to go up every time we talk about it. AT&T, I think, carried around 40 to 50 billion dollars of debt, never got out from under it, and John Stankey handed the company to David Zaslav to flip. Skydance must also show growth, and even Netflix slowing down is making people nervous.

Too Much IP: Release Dates, Money and Talent

A friend who saw the announcement said it was really saying, look what I just bought. DC sits on its own, not a subdivision of anybody. Some of the rest is junk, and some will be sold. MTV has absolutely no value these days, except I believe it airs The Challenge. In imagery so far, Ellison seems to favor Paramount, his first purchase, and Warner Bros almost seems like the Fox, which to me is very weird.

Having so much IP brings problems. Other studios have claimed most of the good release dates: Disney has the first weekend of summer, Memorial Day and the weekend before Christmas, and Universal has the Fourth of July. I put a question mark next to Barbie, which was heavily featured even though no deal has been done. Production and marketing money is supposedly finite, and when courting talent, where do you send them? Maybe you let them choose.

As for Zaslav, according to Puck News he briefly posted a goodbye message on Instagram and then deleted it. Reports say he got $800 million personally, and I think retirement or another industry would be a good idea for him.

Ynon Kreiz and the Coming Layoffs

Ynon Kreiz comes from Mattel to be joint chief executive with Ellison. Some compared it to Bob Iger and Bob Chapek, and it kind of is like that, but I think Kreiz knows exactly what he has been brought in to do: the stuff Ellison does not want to do. He has an incredible resume, and I think he worked at Maker Studios.

The CEO of RedBird Capital, which I think is one of the biggest investors, claims technology will save money, but I feel the way technology saves money is by cutting jobs. The company is looking to cut $6 billion in operational costs as soon as possible, and a lot will come from layoffs. When Ellison took over Paramount he fired 10% of the company, and when Kreiz took over Mattel he got rid of 20%. With fewer competing companies, people let go will find it harder to stay in the industry.

I do think eventually there will be a Hollywood garage sale, especially of cable networks. Under the settlement with the attorneys general, Warner Bros and Paramount stay separate studios for five years, each supposed to produce 15 movies a year. I don't think they will be fully operational studios; they will be more like production companies. No one has ever done this before.

Meet the New Skydance Executives

Andy Gordon, the president, handles the nuts and bolts. Casey Bloys will keep running HBO and also run Paramount+ and basically all of streaming, and I hope he has time to shepherd HBO. He says that for now he believes HBO Max and Paramount+ will be a combined service like Disney+ and Hulu. George Cheeks comes from CBS, and I believe he is going to oversee all the television production companies.

Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein now run both film divisions, and everybody reports to them apparently except James Gunn, who goes directly to Ellison and Kreiz. JB Perrette oversees Warner Bros Games. Mark Thompson continues running CNN. Some people thought Bari Weiss might take over CNN as well as CBS. I don't want that, but I would get someone else to run CNN.

James Gunn and Peter Safran Survive, but DC Has a Problem

Gunn and Safran are staying for now. I said I would not get rid of them but would have put an executive above them. It leads me to believe Gunn must be amazing in a room. Part of me wonders if he was so aggressive about my negative comments on Peacemaker season 1 because he was trying to get the DC job.

Executives care about follower counts but never go on social media, or they would have seen DC having yet another problem. I would hire a head of social media to give me a weather report: "I don't necessarily have to bend to the wind." Follower counts do not translate to box office.

I still believe Gunn's Superman is the best Superman movie ever made, but Supergirl was a disaster and Lanterns turned into Supergirl with its last episode. Clayface will give us an answer by the end of the month. Man of Tomorrow arrives this coming summer, and I think it is way overcrowded. I think they really did John Stewart dirty with the Lanterns finale, and I think that's going to be a problem. The trailer will probably come in December, and I still think there's a chance it is a good movie. I am surprised Gunn is already writing a third film, and I don't think he should write everything.

Some readers have suggested Gunn might be writing Wonder Woman. I don't know. He is usually not great with female characters, though he did a wonderful job with Lois Lane. Maybe it's a Justice League movie. This is a guess and I have heard nothing, but if Gunn were writing a Justice League movie, I kind of need to see it. That would be very clever, and it's the only thing I can see him writing, unless it's World's Finest. A project like that could maybe buy him a little more time, as long as Man of Tomorrow does better than Superman did. He has to show growth. He's a very fast writer, so he could have two movies done by the time Man of Tomorrow comes out. It's so weird: I hate so much of what Gunn has done, but I love his Superman so much, and Lanterns was so good until it wasn't.

The Batman Part II Stopped In The Middle Of Production

Then there's yesterday's headline: The Batman Part II has been delayed again. All weekend people were excited about the set being built in London, with a Gotham subway, a subway sign and a Christmas tree. Then they had to stop. That's actually extremely sad. It must be serious if Matt Reeves had to leave when they were getting ready to film on Monday. Warner Bros announced it is for personal reasons, and it's nobody's business. It is not Matt Reeves himself, and I just hope everything is okay.

The only reason I hinted at the seriousness of the situation last year is that people were being so horrible about the delay that I thought they would really regret those comments. I'm glad some people remembered, and that for the most part people are being kinder. This problem has been going on for quite some time, and he has worked as hard as he can to forge ahead with the movie anyway.

Gunn Is Taking The Heat To Protect Matt Reeves

I saw a lot of people yesterday claiming shenanigans, saying it was like taking Justice League away from Zack Snyder during his own tragedy, with history repeating itself and more evil executives. That is not the case whatsoever. It is really to Gunn's credit that he is letting everybody say horrible things about him while protecting Reeves's privacy. Gunn loves to tweet and could have said something. I think it's admirable, a good example of him being a good guy and perhaps why he is so good in a room, because this is a business of relationships.

The studio is in a very tough spot. There is a necessity to deliver the product, and you can only keep a franchise on hold so long, but filming has started and apparently people seem very happy with how it's going. What else can you do? This Batman movie will come out at some point. Either it will be phenomenal and everyone will want more, or it won't work out and people will say at least Reeves got to make the movie he wanted to make. We've waited this long; we might as well see this to the end with dignity and respect.

February 18th, 2028 Is Only An Okay Date For Batman

Right now the studio says the film can still make February 18th, 2028. I wonder who these statements are coming from these days. It can't leave 2028, but since the date is so early in the year, I think they should be able to pick a later slot. I don't even think February is a great date for Batman, especially if there's supposed to be a lot of snow and Christmas in the movie. Batman Returns was a July release set at Christmas. Maybe they'll move it to October or December.

Robert Pattinson has had a rough time. He made The Batman at 35 and is going into the sequel at 40. Tom Holland has really grown up as Peter Parker over about ten years, and I'm sure he'll play him for at least two more movies. I feel a little bad Pattinson was robbed of that. He even said he freaked out that other people were playing Batman, like Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton. But don't cry for him: he's having a banner year and will probably get an Oscar nomination, my money being on The Odyssey. For DC, everything hinges on Man of Tomorrow beating Superman's roughly 625 million, about 100 million less than The Batman, which was in the high 700s.

Spielberg And Michael Bay Return For The Eighth Transformers

This morning, as Skydance officially took over, it announced the eighth live action Transformers movie, with Spielberg back. Half of those films, maybe even two thirds, were extraordinarily successful. The real problem is that Peter Cullen passed away. Do you use an AI version, or recast Optimus Prime? They should talk to the fans about it.

Why Transformers over Star Trek? Box office. After Titanic at 2.2 billion and Top Gun: Maverick at 1.5 billion, Paramount's next three highest grossers are all Michael Bay Transformers movies. If you're a numbers guy like David Ellison, you put the team back together. Paramount is also moving fast on G.I. Joe, which Danny McBride is scripting and maybe directing, with Bradley Cooper in the Channing Tatum role, which I have mixed feelings on.

Spielberg will have creative oversight, as on the first two films. That makes me a little nervous, because I thought Disclosure Day was very dated. Maybe a nostalgia play will be all right, and maybe his producing Zach Cregger's The Flood will prove he can be more current. Lorenzo di Bonaventura, who has produced all the Transformers movies, is still producing. I can't believe they're bringing back Michael Bay. I don't think he has evolved at all as a storyteller, but if you want it to look like Transformers, you bring in the guy who made it that way. I don't know if it's a good idea, but it would get attention, and Bay is a perfect Skydance fit. Jason Fuchs, of It: Welcome to Derry, is scripting. He wrote Argylle, which tanked, so that makes me nervous, but Derry makes me feel better. I worry his former partner Brad Caleb Kane might have been the special sauce, based on how Crystal Lake turned out.

Mark Wahlberg And Will Smith Are My Bets

I don't think Shia LaBeouf is coming back; he would be impossible to insure. Megan Fox I wouldn't bring back as a main character, maybe a cameo, but probably not. She did hate working with Bay, and she's not coming back, because if she did the press tour everybody would bring that up again. I think John Turturro is a good bet and Mark Wahlberg an excellent one, given what I think is a good relationship with Skydance, his Bay history and a Transformers film that made a billion dollars. And Will Smith: the last Bad Boys did very well, and Bay has a long history with him. Wahlberg and Will Smith might be a little too Michael Bay, but I see the vision.

Am I surprised Spielberg is the first major filmmaker to sign with the new Skydance? Not at all. He is old school, probably travels in the same circles as the Ellisons, and has no controversy around him, which makes it easier for others to follow.

Would you rather see Wahlberg and Will Smith lead the new Transformers, or should the franchise move on without Bay?