‘Cuts mean jobs’: Skydance staff brace for shake-up after $110bn megamerger

‘Cuts mean jobs’: Skydance staff brace for shake-up after $110bn megamerger Battle far from over after Paramount and Warner Bros deal creates new global entertainment powerhouse

“I t feels like the calm before the storm,” says an executive at Skydance, the newly minted media empire formed from the megamerger of Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery (WBD). “David has got what he wanted, but now there is a price to pay.”

Earlier this month, David Ellison, Skydance’s chief executive, sealed the $110bn (£82bn) deal , creating a global powerhouse spanning two Hollywood studios each more than a century old, the TV networks HBO, MTV and Discovery, and news outlets CBS and CNN.

Having seen off a rival bid from Netflix and faced significant political and industry opposition, in a process Ellison told employees was at times “downright ugly”, the battle is far from over for Hollywood’s newest magnate.

With an aggressive target of reducing an eyewatering debt load of more than $80bn in just three years, it is what is going to be cut, sold and restructured that will be uppermost in the minds of Skydance’s more than 53,000 employees.

Ellison, 43, who studied film and acted in the 2006 film Flyboys before moving into producing, is targeting $6bn in savings within three years. Executives and financial backers are steering away from the need for swingeing job losses, but a memo from management earlier this month warned that there would be “difficult decisions that affect our workforce”.

“It is business as usual but, to be honest, everyone is worried about what happens next,” says another Skydance executive. “Cuts inevitably mean jobs.”

There are also concerns about the political direction of the new entity, given Ellison’s closeness to Donald Trump – a longtime friend of his father, Larry, who co-founded the software company Oracle. David Ellison has pushed back at such framing , stating: “We do not want to politicise the company.”

Nevertheless, fears in the news division have been stoked by events at Paramount before the merger. It came under fire for cancelling the long-running Late Show with Stephen Colbert after its host said it had paid a “big fat bribe” for settling a $16m lawsuit with Trump.

Days later, US regulators agreed the $8.4bn merger of Paramount with Ellison’s Skydance Media , with Trump ally Kenneth Weinstein’s appointment as ombudsman at CBS News to root out “complaints of bias” as one of the conditions to get regulatory approval.

Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s international anchor, criticised the “ideological realignment of CBS” and warned that changes and cuts could lead to the potential “destruction” of flagship news show 60 Minutes. This week, she announced she was leaving CNN after 43 years, although her exit is not thought to be tied to the new ownership.