Meet David Ellison, the 42-year-old Paramount Skydance CEO trying to throw a monkey wrench in Netflix’s plan

https://www.businessinsider.com/meet-david-ellison-paramount-skydance-ceo-2025-12?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=BusinessInsider-post-rentertainment

27 comments

  1. ***From Business Insider’s Paige Bruton, Sarah Jackson, and Henry Chandonnet:***

    David Ellison is officially the CEO of Paramount Skydance. After a successful Paramount merger, next on his wish list is Warner Bros. Discovery — and he’s launched a hostile takeover bid in an effort to scoop it out from Netflix’s hands.

    The 42-year-old founded Skydance back in 2006 with some help from his father Larry Ellison, the Oracle cofounder who’s worth $277 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

    Since then, Skydance has enjoyed considerable success with films including “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” and “Baywatch,” and a total box office haul of more than $8 billion. The merger deal valued Skydance at $4.75 billion.

    Before becoming an entertainment executive, though, Ellison had a brief foray as an actor.

    In 2006, he appeared in a Skydance film called “Flyboys,” about American pilots who flew for the French Air Force in World War I.

    The movie cost about $65 million, but flopped after taking just $18 million or so, per The Hollywood Reporter.

    Since moving behind the camera, Ellison’s company has had a relationship with Paramount that dates back to 2011 when Skydance co-financed Joel and Ethan Coen’s “True Grit” with the studio.

    The $8 billion tie-up of Skydance and Paramount officially closed in August. Ellison named himself chairman and CEO of the newly combined company, Paramount Skydance.

    Soon after taking the helm, Ellison led Paramount Skydance through layoffs, which can be common in the wake of a merger. The company laid off 1,000 employees in October and said that more cuts were coming. Six hundred employees took severance packages and quit instead of returning to the office, it said.

    Ellison has also installed Bari Weiss at the top of CBS News. Weiss left The New York Times Opinion section in 2020 and later built the The Free Press, which Paramount Skydance acquired for about $150 million.

    Ellison continued his spending run. He brought in Netflix veteran Cindy Holland and shelled out $7.7 billion for UFC rights.

    “Everywhere you look, he’s throwing money,” LightShed Partners media analyst Rich Greenfield told Business Insider. “That’s what Hollywood gets excited about.”

    [Read more about Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison here.](https://www.businessinsider.com/meet-david-ellison-paramount-skydance-ceo-2025-12?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=insider-entertainment-sub-comment)

  3. When the administration strongarms a company the size of Tiktok from a foreign government and the new ‘caretaker’ uses it to back a massive purchase of domestic media. 

  5. I don’t love Netflix getting it. I don’t love Larry getting it and turning it right wing. But at the price it is going for, who? Is there a single buyer that we would be excited about?

  7. Meet David Ellison, the 42-year-old man child who threw a tantrum because he wasn’t selected by WBD and is now having his family friends try to intervene so he can get what he wants.

  8. CEO or petulant child using daddy’s money to get his oompa loompa?

  11. Every article on this misses the point. Either one of these mergers is horrible for consumers and their respective industries. Neither merger should be approved.

  12. So if he’s willing to pay 40% more just to get the win, we should expect the price increase to be 40% higher because we all know that’s how this works

  13. Whomever gets WB watch carefully for stifling of free speech.

  14. His dad is a right-wing funder, and they can both suck rocks!

  16. Another Trump crony looking to put a deal together fraudulently by padding Trump’s pockets.

  17. He’s a nepo turd, just like Trump. Fuck all billionaires.

  18. I’d never heard of this guy and yet immediately knew how he got the position at such a relatively young age.

  22. That dude is the poster boy for “do you know who my daddy is?”

  27. Just two days ago people are bitching about Netflix buying Warren Brothers. The alternative seems even worse.

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