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Happy Sunday WrapPRO Enterprisers,
I had originally planned to write this week about succession planning in media following last Monday’s news that the Murdochs had reached a settlement over the protracted power play that ultimately will leave Rupert’s eldest son, Lachlan, on top.
But a Wall Street Journal scoop Thursday detailing a possible Ellisons-backed Paramount bid for all of Warner Bros. Discovery got me thinking how in a matter of four days, we just witnessed the evolution of media, as one patriarchy sunsets and another, in Larry and David Ellison, signals that they ain’t here just to play.
The billionaire class controlling media is endlessly fascinating for people in my profession, and the Murdochs, whose fortunes were built on 24-point hot type and barrels of ink, did not disappoint. Father vs. sons and daughters, siblings vs. siblings. Sorry, HBO, real life was better.
Enter the Ellisons, whose fortunes were built on code and cloud, the tandem running a Paramount that the New York Times’ DealBook on Friday conjectured “could become the most important player at the intersection of media and technology. The Ellisons could ultimately control Oracle, Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery and TikTok — a collective juggernaut with unique reach and influence.”
This newsletter back in June forecast the power that the Oracle co-founder would wield with his son and Paramount. And the Ellisons’ billions, a tech background and connections at the White House set the stage for a new era in media and entertainment. Larry’s net worth grew by $100 billion (to $380 billion) on Oracle’s stock rise last Wednesday on earnings and AI deal news. Paramount’s market cap is about $16 billion. So Larry made in a single day six times what the stock market is valuing he and David’s new company.
Rupert is 94 and I’m sure he’s not quite done yet. Still, Larry is 81, so that tells me there’s lots of runway left to shake things up, with mountains of money to spend.
Even if the Warner Bros. Discovery bid doesn’t materialize, last week’s news feels significant enough to call it a landscape shift with a passing of a baton from one ruling family to another.
Crush it this week.
Tom Lowry
SVP/Editorial Strategy
tom.lowry@thewrap.com
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1. The AI Medusa Thank you to Axios for creating this Gorgon, grateful to see a human, Erin Davis, created it and not a monster from the AI machine. The graphic captures the state of dynamics between choosing to partner with an AI firm or to sue them, or maybe both.
For Hollywood, focus on the upper right hand part of this, to see the lawsuits filed against Midjourney.
2. VC ❤️ AI, Match Made in Tech Heaven We came across this chart from the Visual Capitalist and it was a stunner. Using data from J.P. Morgan, it shows companies in the AI industry are dominating venture capital investment, making up 71% of equity investments in the first quarter of 2025. When breaking down by company type, foundational model makers (like OpenAI and Anthropic) received the majority of investment at just over $40 billion.
If you want keep a closer eye on VC investing in the media and entertainment space, don’t miss our monthly column The Funding File.
In recent months, we’ve been writing and reading an awful lot about James Gunn, the other co-chairman and co-CEO of DC Studios, largely because of his work with Superman, and that he is thought of as a creative. The suit in the DC tandem, if you’re to believe that, is Peter Safran, the 59-year-old Princeton, NYU law grad who made his career early on repping talent like J-Lo and Brooke Shields.
This past week, our film reporter Jeremy Fuster shined some light on Safran and how his work as a producer is helping New Line Cinema drive success for Warner Bros. Three hit New Line films, while all horror, are making the difference, while the films themselves are quite different. “Final Destination: Bloodlines” is a successful revival of a franchise that had been dormant for 15 years. “Weapons” is an original horror film from a rapidly rising director in Zach Cregger. And now there’s “The Conjuring: Last Rites,” which cashed in on 12 years of passion for the universe built by series creator James Wan and producer Safran.
In addition, these films all boasted modest budgets, making them safer bets for the studio. The quartet of movies (also including “Companion,” which made less of a splash at the box office) had a combined reported production budget of $153 million, slightly more than the $150 million of the near-$1 billion grossing “Minecraft.”
“When James Wan and I were making the first ‘Conjuring’ films, we naturally wanted to experiment and keep the stories and characters fresh. At the same time, what became clear to us then and is equally clear to James Gunn and myself now at DC Studios is how important it is that we listen to our audience, and let them tell us what excites and resonates most with them,” he said. “For example, when we made ‘The Conjuring 2,’ our thinking was that the audience would latch onto The Crooked Man, but it turned out to be a spooky nun we added in reshoots.”
“The rest, as they say, is ‘Conjuring’ history.”
Why CEOs should care about the eroding middle class, Modern CEO, Stephanie Mehta
What YouTube’s first NFL game says about the league’s future, CNBC Sport
Why job market predictions about AI sometimes miss the point, Columbia Business School, Roland Wyn Jones
