Paramount closes its $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. David Ellison now runs CBS, CNN and two studios
Paramount Skydance completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday, Oct. 6, putting David Ellison in control of the Warner Bros. film and television studios, HBO, the Discovery cable networks and CNN, alongside Paramount Pictures and CBS. The transaction is valued at about $110 billion and pays WBD shareholders $31 a share in cash; Netflix had offered $27.75 and declined to match. Paramount launched a hostile $30-a-share bid in December 2025, signed a definitive agreement on Feb. 27, 2026, and won shareholder approval on April 23, when investors also rejected, in a nonbinding vote, executive pay packages including Chief Executive David Zaslav's. A coalition of state attorneys general led by California sued to block the deal; the case was settled in September after Paramount agreed to an editorial independence board to protect CNN and CBS News and to keep up theatrical film output, with about $1.5 billion in additional film spending over five years, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. The combined company is to be called Skydance Corp., Variety reported, and carries roughly $80 billion of debt. Ellison said his focus 'now turns to the future.'
This is one of the largest media mergers ever, and it puts two of the five legacy Hollywood studios, a broadcast network and the best-known cable news brand under one owner whose family has close ties to the president. The settlement terms on CNN are novel: an independence board written into an antitrust deal. Whether it has teeth will be tested the first time CNN's coverage and the owner's interests collide.
If you subscribe to Paramount+ and HBO Max, expect plans for a combined service at some point; nothing changes this week. If you watch CNN or CBS News, the people deciding budgets have changed today. If you go to the movies, the film-count commitment is the one promise to hold the company to.
Scale is survival. Streaming rewards the biggest libraries, and a combined Warner–Paramount can finally compete with Netflix, Disney and Amazon. The settlement locks in movie output and newsroom independence that a breakup would not have guaranteed.
About $80 billion of debt means cost cuts come first, and the easiest cuts are people and newsrooms. A board on paper does not stop an owner from choosing who runs CNN, or what it is paid to cover.
Watch three things in the first 30 days: who is named to run CNN, whether the new company announces its cost-savings target, and how the two studio lots are divided. The debt figure is the number that drives all three. A company starting near $80 billion in borrowings has to find savings fast, and the settlement only fences off movies and the editorial board.
DailyDrop U.S. No. 2 · October 6, 2026