Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery Merger Closes in $111B Deal

The largest consolidation of traditional media assets in Hollywood history became official Tuesday, as David Ellison’s Skydance completed its $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.

Shares began trading under the new ticker symbol SKYD, replacing the PSKY designation used briefly last week when the company operated as Paramount Skydance. The rebranding strips away the Paramount name entirely, returning to the moniker Ellison chose two decades ago when he first entered the film industry.

The transaction unites an unprecedented concentration of legacy entertainment infrastructure under a single corporate roof. The combined entity now owns two major Hollywood film studios, the HBO and Max streaming platforms alongside Paramount+, and a television portfolio that includes CBS, CNN, Comedy Central, TBS, and Food Network.

For the 43-year-old chief executive, son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, the closing marks the end of a year-long campaign to absorb Warner Bros. Discovery into his expanding holdings. His family’s backing provided the financial weight necessary to outmaneuver competing interests during the prolonged negotiations.

The sheer scale of the newly formed conglomerate stands in stark contrast to the broader trajectory of the media industry, where rivals such as Walt Disney Co. and Comcast have spent recent years shedding linear television networks to focus capital on direct-to-consumer streaming. By consolidating cable mainstays like CNN and TBS with premium brands including HBO and CBS, Ellison is effectively betting that bundled ownership of both distribution pipelines and content libraries retains more value than Wall Street has recently assumed.

The merger also merges two historically distinct studio cultures. Warner Bros., founded in 1923, carries nearly a century of institutional memory and one of the industry’s deepest intellectual property vaults. Skydance, built primarily on big-budget franchise productions and technology partnerships since its founding in 2006, operates with a leaner, more agile production model. Integrating those operational philosophies will dictate how quickly the combined studio slate can be streamlined without disrupting ongoing productions or alienating top-tier creative talent bound by existing deals.

Regulatory scrutiny accompanied the final stages of the agreement, given the combined company’s dominance over news broadcasting, premium scripted television, and theatrical distribution. The approval clears the way for immediate restructuring efforts across overlapping divisions, particularly in marketing, distribution, and back-office operations where redundancies between the former Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery structures are most pronounced.

Trading in SKYD opened Tuesday morning as executives begin mapping the integration of thousands of employees across both organizations.