Media Monday: Skydance’s Sizzle Reel & Thompson’s Upper Hand

Jon Kelly (0:02)

Ellison is going to operate differently. He will be blamed for that. People will be very angry about that because it is a relationships business. It's all going to come down to what works, and turbocharging what works, and deprecating what doesn't.

Peter Hamby (0:20)

Welcome to The Powers That Be Daily, Pucks podcast focused on the intersection of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood, and the players who run it all. I'm Peter Hamby.

It's Monday, October 5th, which means it's Media Monday. Today, Jon Kelly and I talk about the newly minted Skydance, David Ellison's title for Paramount Warner Brothers, announced with a buzzy movie-like trailer late last week. Jon and I ask what kind of films Ellison plans to make, which players will be calling the shots inside the company, and why Bari Weiss won't have a role at CNN after all. We'll discuss all that and much more on today's episode of The Powers That Be.

Happy Monday everybody and welcome to The Powers That Be. If it's Monday, it's Media Monday. Guess what? It's going to be Media Tuesday too, just to accommodate some scheduling things, some travel things. Jon and I are taping back to back Media Monday episodes. We're going to talk about the brand new Skydance that launched with a sizzle reel last week. We're also going to talk about some of the big personnel moves. Mark Thompson probably going to stay at CNN. We're going to talk a little bit about Enan Kreitz from Mattel going to Skydance. We're going to talk about Roger Lynch leaving Conde Nast to go to Mattel. Jon, of course, used to walk the halls of Conde Nast. He's going to have some insights there. So make sure you tune in tomorrow as well to catch all angles of this conversation. Jon, let's start with the new Skydance. The judge signed off on this deal last week. Everything is done. I think the deal closes tomorrow on Tuesday.

Paramount Warner Brothers will now be called Skydance. They launched a big movie trailer style promotional video on Friday, which is befitting David Ellison because he likes to think of himself as a big movie guy. You saw clips from Top Gun and Titanic and 75 different Leonardo DiCaprio movies along with a Tom Brady clip was in there. Obviously, there's NFL rights included in this new company. The only other NFL clip, Jon, that I saw in there was a weird Jaguars Browns clip. I don't know, I would have had a Ballnower edit that. A Ballnower should have edited that sizzle. Anyway, what did you make of the trailer? What does it say about Skydance and this new company?

Jon Kelly (2:51)

A lot of the early signs have not been surprising. I think that the Ellison team has had a year or many months to work on the integration and the deal. On some level, I was surprised but not surprised that it's called Skydance. It's his money. That was his company and he is acquiring these assets. He bought Paramount, now he's buying WBD. I actually think on some level that they're trying to call the entire entity Skydance in a corporate clarifying way, the same way that Viacom was the home to MTV and Comedy Central and other networks.

This was the best way to avoid a word salad.

Peter Hamby (3:34)

We've been using the word salad for years now, I feel like. Paramount, Warner Brothers, Parabros, WarnerMount. And look, Warner Brothers is basically going away, so it makes sense just to rebrand it something else.

Jon Kelly (3:46)

Well, the studio of Warner Brothers will be independent, so it will be preserved for at least half a decade, and I imagine maybe more.

But yes, it's all one company now, Peter, and the guy owns it, he's gonna do with it what he wants, and I'm sure that they were exhaling when they finally got to roll out this video. The biggest surprise to me in all of this is that the Browns are three in one. When this was all happening, I didn't have that on my dance card. Of course, I should note that Redbird, an investor in Skydance, is also an investor in Puck. But a lot of these moves have not been surprising to me, Peter, right? I think Mac did an amazing job on Thursday night breaking the news that Mike and Pam were gonna be leaving Warner Brothers, and that all of the studio infrastructure was gonna roll up into the Paramount Studio leadership team. We're not surprised by that, not only because Ellison has a more longitudinal working relationship there, although not much more, but also, I think, because the style of the genre that Abdy and De Luca had become so prominent for, and which was an incredible display last year with one battle after another and Sinners.