Brooks Barnes
The age of the Hollywood mogul was supposed to be over. Movies are dead, haven’t you heard? Even the grandest studio – Warner Bros. – had started to resemble a relic of a powerful past.
Then came a “kid.”
David Ellison, the son of Oracle’s billionaire co-founder Larry Ellison, was 23 when he arrived in the movie capital in 2006. Hollywood insiders laughed behind his back. He was dumb money to be fleeced, another starstruck rich guy with a chequebook. A 2015 GQ profile ran with the headline “The Kid Pays for the Picture”.
On Monday, after a remarkable, almost inconceivable run of dealmaking and brinkmanship, David Ellison – all of 43 years old – stood on the verge of adding Warner Bros. Discovery to his Paramount Skydance, giving him control of two businesses that helped invent the movie and television industries. A settlement with 12 states cleared the antitrust lawsuit that was the remaining obstacle to the $US111 billion ($158 billion) takeover.
Ellison was already an unusual figure in modern Hollywood – a controlling owner who was also CEO and a hands-on movie and television producer. Adding Warner Bros. Discovery will expand his power to a scale without precedent, spanning a wider range of media than the empires of classic moguls such as Jack Warner and Louis B. Mayer.
Even Bob Iger, for all his regal command as Disney’s CEO over the decades, never combined all those roles.
“David’s about to become the Hollywood equivalent of Superman, Caesar and Midas combined,” Joseph M. Singer, a veteran film financier and former studio executive, said in an email. “He won’t just be sitting at the table. He’ll have extraordinary influence over who gets a seat.”
Singer had publicly opposed the sale of Warner Bros. Discovery to Paramount Skydance, citing concerns about consolidation-related job losses and the roughly $US79 billion in net debt that the conglomerate would carry at closing, among other worries.
“I believe David’s intentions are good and his ambitions genuine,” Singer said. “But I remain concerned that this concentration of power is not in the interests of our business. I hope I am proved wrong.”
Other critics were not so generous on Monday. A senior agent and two film producers privately likened Ellison to Michael Corleone in The Godfather, a Paramount film. The character began as an outsider and became the boss, consolidating power with startling effectiveness.
The Ellison family’s ties to President Donald Trump – which included a dinner that David Ellison hosted in April “honouring the Trump White House” – have made many Democrats and a sizable contingent in Hollywood wary of his growing power. His empire will now span CNN and CBS News; HBO, MTV, BET, Comedy Central and TNT; the Paramount+ and HBO Max streaming services; and two of Hollywood’s oldest movie studios.
Put another way, Ellison will soon have Batman, Harry Potter, Captain Kirk, Wonder Woman, Ethan Hunt, Maverick and SpongeBob SquarePants reporting to him.
“We vehemently oppose the agreement to allow David Ellison to take over Warner Bros. Discovery,” a campaign called Block the Merger said in a statement. “This is a bad deal for the future of film, entertainment, independent journalism and a strong democracy in this country.”
The campaign was organised by the Future Film Coalition, a nonprofit that gathered thousands of signatures from film and television workers opposed to the merger.
Ellison settled the antitrust lawsuits with California and 11 other states after months of legal and political combat. The lawsuits argued that the merger would reduce competition in movies and cable TV.
The states relented after Ellison agreed to concessions, including a five-year commitment to release at least 30 movies annually, $US1.5 billion in additional domestic production spending, and the creation of an independent board to safeguard editorial independence at CNN and CBS News.
In an email to Paramount employees, Ellison said he expected the Warner Bros. Discovery takeover to close in about two weeks. He will exercise control of Paramount and Warner Bros. through his family’s 77.5 per cent stake in the company’s voting shares.
“This is the first time since Walt Disney that you will have a family own and control a major Hollywood company with this level of hands-on management,” said Gerry Cardinale, a Paramount board member. Cardinale is the founder of RedBird Capital, the second-largest investor in Ellison’s deal for Warner Bros. Discovery.
“There’s a changing of the guard taking place,” Cardinale added, referring not only to Ellison’s ascension but also to an owner-operated model that Hollywood had largely abandoned.
Amassing all that power may prove easier than wielding it.
Along with the mountain of debt, Ellison’s new company will need to contend with a cable TV business that is shrinking as viewers continue to cut the cord. He must also integrate two enormous companies – he has promised $US6 billion in savings – while navigating internal turmoil and political and editorial pressures at CBS News and CNN. Despite owning two major streaming services, Ellison will still be competing against Netflix and YouTube.
He also faces Hollywood’s most basic problem: how to make movies and TV shows that enough people want to watch.
‘David’s about to become the Hollywood equivalent of Superman, Caesar and Midas combined.’
Film financier and former studio executive Joseph M. Singer
After a banner run last year, Warner Bros. has stumbled badly at the box office in 2026. It ranks sixth among the seven largest studios in domestic market share this year, according to data from Rentrak, which tracks ticket sales. Paramount is seventh. Each has about 5 per cent of the market, compared with 24 per cent for Universal, the leader, and 21 per cent for Disney.
On Monday, however, Hollywood focused less on Ellison’s challenges than it did on his remarkable rise.
It was only 13 months ago that he completed an $US8 billion deal to buy Paramount, home to CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon and its namesake movie studio. Four months later, Ellison launched a hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, which had already agreed to sell itself to Netflix. By February, he had outmanoeuvred Netflix and had a deal in place.
Twelve Democratic state attorneys general then sued to block the Warner takeover. Thousands of film and television workers publicly opposed the combination. The Writers Guild of America mounted its own legal challenge.
None of it stopped him.
A man who spent years struggling to be taken seriously had become impossible to underestimate.
In the email to employees, Ellison positioned the closing not as a culmination but as a beginning. “Closing is really just the starting line,” he said, adding: “I’m confident we’re going to build something special together in the years ahead.
“Let’s go!”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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