Paramount and Warner Bros. will merge under the name Skydance
If you subscribe to HBO Max or Paramount+, the same company is about to own both. Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery plan to close their $111 billion merger on October 6, at $31 per share in cash. CEO David Ellison says on X the combined business will be called Skydance. Your streaming apps, channels and studios keep their current names.
The name
Ellison says both companies have brands that audiences have trusted for generations, and he did not want a new corporate identity to replace them. Skydance is the umbrella only.
The group will include HBO, HBO Max, Paramount+, CBS, CNN, MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network and TNT. It also gets a deep film catalog: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Mission: Impossible, Transformers, Game of Thrones, Star Trek and DC Comics. The first Game of Thrones movie already has a release date of June 6, 2029.
The approvals
Some early reports claimed a California federal court signed off on the deal. That is not what happened. The approvals came from regulators.
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority cleared the deal unconditionally on August 6. It said Universal, Disney and Sony still give cinemas enough competition. The European Commission approved it on July 22, with conditions: Paramount must sell its stake in UIP, a film distribution joint venture, and cannot strike film distribution deals with Universal in Europe for 10 years. Paramount says it has cleared regulators in about 70 countries.
The US was the harder fight. State attorneys general sued, and a court froze the merger until 2027 in July. Paramount later settled with 12 states, which removed the last major hurdle.
Games and jobs
Nothing official yet on Warner Bros. Games. It will most likely join the newly formed Paramount Games. That would put NetherRealm (Mortal Kombat), Rocksteady (Batman: Arkham), TT Games (the LEGO games) and Avalanche Software (Hogwarts Legacy) under the same roof.
The leadership shake-up is already underway. Variety reports that Warner Bros. Pictures chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy are leaving, with Paramount executives running both studios. David Zaslav, Warner Bros. Discovery's chief executive, is also expected to go. DC Studios and HBO Max are not facing big changes for now, and James Gunn and Peter Safran continue to oversee the DC film universe.
For subscribers, the practical question is whether the two streaming services eventually merge or see price changes. Nothing has been announced on either.
