The man who would be king of media is upset that the peasants didn’t immediately accept his attempt to add another company to his fiefdom. In a sweaty op-ed in The New York Times, Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison shared that he was hurt when people saw his actions for what they were, especially now that the Paramount and Warner Bros. merger—postponed for months after its intended closing—hangs in the balance. But the big crocodile tears over his rejection by the working ranks of the industry he’s attempting to pillage barely hide this piece’s true intention. He appeals to the reader that he’s just like us—he loves movies, too! Especially action and horror sequels, which seem to be the main kinds of movies Paramount knows how to greenlight these days. But no amount of spin can sugarcoat the utter disaster of layoffs, creative consolidation, and sheer mediocrity that awaits if Richie Rich runs ramshod over the industry he claims to love so much.
Ellison argues that this merger is being blown out of proportion, and that the 12 state attorneys general, the Writers Guild Of America, and regulators from 65 countries (including the U.S.) have it all wrong. He would only oversee 20% of the film world’s market share, and roughly around that amount of the total domestic box office, that’s all! Just one out of every five movie tickets sold would belong to a Paramount-WB release!
He attempts to stem criticism of his planned acquisition by pointing to what Paramount’s done lately, almost doubling its theatrical slate from last year—which was no doubt affected by the Skydance merger that went through in August 2025 (and that cost at least 2,000 employees their jobs), but there’s no mention of that. Paramount’s first year entirely under Ellison’s reign is one weighted towards male moviegoers, filled with genre pieces, IP entries, and whatever problematic subgenre we want to coin for actors accused of being shitty to their partners, including Heart Of The Beast (Brad Pitt) and Ebenezer (Johnny Depp).
After making grand overtures to exhibitors about the importance of the theatrical experience at this year’s CinemaCon in April, it’s funny that Ellison is downplaying how many millions of dollars at the box office would be under threat—for the major movie chains, all the way down to independent mom-and-pop theaters. If Ellison ran Warner Bros. like he’s run Paramount, expect more sequels and fewer risks, leading to way fewer opportunities for an Obsession to break through and for far fewer sustainable employment options for anyone making movies outside of Ellison’s preferred brand of moneymakers. For every original movie by a director like Elegance Bratton, expect many times more sequels, like Paranormal Activity 8, and remakes, like the Possession redux no one asked for.
At CinemaCon and in his op-ed essay, Ellison recommits to an increased slate of releases, but who’s to say that future “economic headwinds” don’t cause him—in competition mostly with himself—to rein in that production, distribution, and marketing spend once the merger goes through, especially since the company will need to cover that nice big debt it’ll sink itself in once the deal finishes. It’s hard to imagine this envisioned megastudio would release an ambitious but risky import like Better Man, or partner with a streamer like Apple Studios to release Killers Of The Flower Moon, or make space for original horror movies like Smile. It was rare that this happened among multiple studios. It’d be miraculous to happen at just one.
In the op-ed, he reiterates his commitment to 30 theatrical titles a year between Paramount and Warner Bros., but nowhere is there any kind of commitment to artistic ambition or filmmaker investment to support movies like Weapons, Sinners, or One Battle After Another. He can’t promise anything about art, because he only knows how to talk about movies in terms of profits, citing G.I. Joe: Retaliation and Top Gun: Maverick as examples of his past glories (and Terminator: Dark Fate as a past failure). It’s also possible that more of those promised titles could head straight to streaming; as he’s shown when butchering the legacy of CBS News, his words have often been a cover for what he’ll actually do. As Ellison has proven in other parts of his fiefdom, quality takes a backseat to his personal expectations—like how he’s passed the baton to foot soldiers like CBS News’ Bari Weiss to carry out political messaging he doesn’t have the nerve to put in the paper of record.
But perhaps the thorniest branch of this conversation is the impact of layoffs and consolidation on an already ailing industry. Ellison isn’t wrong that production has shrunk in California as the business has moved to the East Coast or abroad, but it’s delusional to pass off a merger as a potential job creator when it would actually guarantee yet another culling—one likely even bigger than the one that followed the previous merger Paramount was involved in. It’s why the pushback across the industry comes from several industry guilds and workers’ groups, not just the WGA.
In the wake of Ellison’s desperate and deceptive op-ed, everyone should be asking more questions about who is really benefiting from this government-sanctioned sweetheart deal. It sure isn’t stressed working people in Hollywood, or exhibitors nervous about what might happen to 20% of their annual slate, or audiences who enjoy watching movies that are better than The Angry Birds Movie 3. Ellison might be sad over all the negative attention, but the rest of us should be mad as hell that he thinks we’re dumb enough to pick up his bill.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.