Paramount CEO David Ellison dodged talk of the company’s reported plans to submit a bid for all of Warner Bros. Discovery on Thursday. But he does see “a lot” of “actionable” M&A possibilities as the media giant looks to transform itself following Skydance’s $8 billion acquisition.
“The way we approach everything is first and foremost, what’s good for the talent community, what’s good for our shareholders and value creation and what’s good for basically, storytelling at large,” Ellison told Bloomberg’s Screentime conference on Thursday. “I actually do think there’s a lot of options out there in terms of what actually might be actionable in the near future. We would approach that through the lens of wanting to make more, not less.”
When asked what those “actionable” opportunities might be, Ellison declined to comment.
His comments on M&A come after Paramount acquired Bari Weiss’ The Free Press earlier this week for $150 million in a cash and stock deal. Ellison said The Free Press’ values “align” with Paramount and would be crucial to CBS News’ digital strategy and help the news network “get back into the trust business.”
It also comes as Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has long warned that Hollywood is headed for consolidation. For now, WBD is headed in the opposite direction, with the company on track to split its studios & streaming business and linear networks business into two standalone companies, Warner Bros. and Discovery Global, in 2026.
In the nine weeks since closing the Paramount-Skydance merger, the company has made a string of new executive hires, including Josh Silverman to lead the company’s global products & experiences business, Dane Glasgow as chief product officer, Makan Delrahim as chief legal officer and Jay Askinasi as chief revenue officer.
It has also struck new media rights deals with the UFC and Zuffa Boxing, greenlit new series such as Jeremy Strong’s “9/12” and Nicole Kidman and Elle Fanning’s “Discretion,” renewed its deal with “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and struck new deals with creative talent like the The Duffer Brothers and James Mangold.
Looking ahead, Paramount is aiming to exceed $2 billion in cost savings, which is expected to include thousands of job cuts and a review of its real estate portfolio. It will also look to drive efficiencies in areas including technology by putting Paramount+, Pluto TV and BET+ on the same backend infrastructure and scale Skydance and Oracle’s Studio in the Cloud partnership across Paramount.
Ellison is expected to detail more of Paramount’s plans and vision for the future during the company’s earnings call in November. Shares of Paramount are up 53.9% in the past six months and year to date and 18% in the past month.
