David Ellison Meets the Press
- David Ellison, the new chief of Paramount Skydance, emphasized the importance of embracing technology in Hollywood and taking an artist-driven approach to content creation.
In his first few minutes as the chief of the newly minted Paramount Skydance, David Ellison took the microphone and mostly deflected a bunch of questions from reporters who've followed every dramatic turn of the 13-month journey to close the $8 billion deal to take control of the venerable owner of Paramount Pictures and CBS.
The message from the mogul was urgent: Technology is coming to Hollywood, regardless of whether studios choose to embrace it, so Paramount hopes to take an artist-driven approach to it. That includes machine-learning to help with film and TV show discovery on streaming platforms, as well as an AI influence on "content generation," but Ellison didn't go into specifics about what that could mean. In an example cherry-picked for Hollywood, Pixar was cited for revolutionizing the animation world and ushering in an era of 3D animated blockbusters.
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The Ellisons were framed as the "first time since Walt Disney" that a family put a sizable amount of money — David's father Larry Ellison is worth roughly $300 billion — into the major Hollywood studio business to try and kickstart growth. "This is what I'm doing for the next twenty years of my life," the 42-year-old David Ellison said. "We would not be investing the amount of capital if it was to basically stay stagnant."
The Oracle heir spoke about his affinity for the film and television business — and said the words that all talent wants to hear, that talent is of utmost importance in a storytelling company — but also signaled that he's much more willing to experiment with new technology that can "supercharge" Paramount's IP, which includes SpongeBob SquarePants , Star Trek , Yellowstone and more. (In a nod to the auteur class of Hollywood, the Skydance-era Paramount Pictures unveiled its first original swing, snapping up the James Mangold-directed Timothée Chalamet MotoGP racer movie package High Side shortly after the presentation ended.)
"We need to make more content across the company. We're going to make more movies, we're going to make more series, we're going to invest in the business," Ellison said. "And we're going to significantly scale and supercharge the content engines of the company. And while that is absolutely core to the business, I would advocate today that unless you can build a tech product that is truly competitive with what's coming out of Silicon Valley, you can't compete. And that's one of the big problems that has been facing legacy media. They don't understand that skill set and how critical that is."
Ellison tried to distance himself from the $16 million deal that the Shari Redstone-led leadership made with President Trump to settle a 60 Minutes lawsuit. Pressed by reporters about whether Ellison's Paramount Skydance had a side deal to air public service announcements on the issues Trump cares about, the CEO of the company said that settlement had been made by the prior regime and tried to leave it at that. (The problem is that Trump himself has not left it at that, and has posted on Truth Social about such a deal and talked to reporters about it.) "We're ready to move past the noise," Ellison said. "I'm excited to put my head down and do the work and build this business with this remarkable team up here, not sit up there and talk about, basically, how certain things are politicized."
Ellison added, "Of course we believe in the independence of journalism, we believe in basically being in the trust business, we believe in being in the truth business. But also, I've watched others wade in to the political spectrum and, I just want to be transparent, I have no interest in doing that."
Team Paramount Skydance: Jeff Shell, Gerry Cardinale, David Ellison, George Cheeks and Andy Gordon take questions on Aug. 7 at the company's office.
Ellison, flanked by president Jeff Shell, chairman of TV media George Cheeks, RedBird Capital's Gerry Cardinale and COO Andy Gordon, fielded a series of questions about the deal close on Thursday while at Paramount's Times Square office complex. Over and over, the buzz word among executives who'd gathered was how they were taking care to be "non-political" in this particular moment. As for CBS News, the exec team zeroed in on describing the broadcast brand as being refocused on the "70 percent" of the country that doesn't define itself as either far left or far right politically and said it'll be judged by the journalistic work that it does in the near future.
Ellison was also asked about any deal to buy Bari Weiss' The Free Press , and replied by saying he took "about 50 meetings" during the Sun Valley mogul conference in July. The Weiss news leaked during that billionaire summer camp event, and has been the subject of speculation due to the $100 million rumored price tag for a Substack newsletter brand, but Ellison would only add a boilerplate line that he couldn't comment on rumors and speculation.
Another defensive moment occurred when the exec panel was asked about the cancellation of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert , which will end its run in 2026. It was another move made weeks before the new ownership took over, saving this current exec crew from a decision being technically made on their watch (aside from George Cheeks, who was the exec quoted in the Colbert cancellation press release). The question was parried back to reporters, as the flock of journalists were asked to raise their hands if they watched late-night TV at night when it first airs on linear television. Few reporters raised their hands. "Exactly," Gordon noted. The execs also didn't respond to a question about how much the Colbert-led show was losing annually, aside from noting that the numbers were "significant, in the tens of millions of dollars."
Ellison was more open about in-the-weeds questions, including mentioning talks with several tech partners (including Oracle, which Larry Ellison founded) as well as unifying the Paramount tech stack (the backend technology) that powers Paramount+, BET+ and ad-supported PlutoTV, while acknowledging that there'd be cost-cutting made at the company. The exec team also highlighted the importance of Nickelodeon as as asset along with the Tiffany Network, CBS, which still leads broadcast ratings but is being managed as a healthy but declining linear business.
As for layoffs, look for the November 6 earnings call for those financial outlook details, the execs said, while also appearing to imply that further pink slip decisions wouldn't be a quarter-by-quarter occurrence, or, "death-by-a-thousand-cuts" even though $2 billion-plus in synergies — typically things like redundancies in corporate layers, administration, product or tech — had been targeted.
Despite those expected cuts, the goal would be to invest into the growth areas of the business. What those growth areas may be are an outstanding question (the exec panel only dropped hints of how emerging tech could influence content generation) but Ellison has stated in his deal close letter that he hopes to scale up Paramount's direct-to-consumer business globally. That also includes investing in more content — "the Taylor Sheridan business" was name-checked, in a sign of its prominence, along with an NFL mention — as far as what types of programming may get those dollars. Right now its flagship streamer, Paramount+, has about 77 million subscribers currently, running further behind the likes of Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video and closer to HBO Max (and ahead of Peacock).
Shell, for one, signaled that he's looking forward to finally getting to work implementing the new Skydance plan at Paramount after sitting on the sidelines as the company underwent regulatory review, a drawn out process that, lets just say, certainly didn't stay "non-political."
The new Paramount Skydance will trade on the Nasdaq as "PSKY" in its latest incarnation. In an open letter to shareholders on Thursday, Ellison wrote that he wants "to empower our creative partners with technology that will enable them to tell bigger, more compelling stories fueled by human ingenuity."
Paramount's new studio chiefs, as well as streaming head Cindy Holland, were not present Thursday, with Dana Goldberg, Josh Greenstein and Don Granger walking the Paramount lot in Hollywood to say hello to employees on their first day, ahead of the next changes ahead. As Ellison added during his Times Square panel chat, "We do have to restructure the business. We will do that in a way that will obviously increase cash flow, but to enable us to invest back in to the business to be able to grow and scale it."
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