On August 13, David Ellison brought together his management team in the Study of Paramount Pictures in Los Angeles. He had just taken control of the company and began a new era for this study with 113 years of history. «One of our greatest priorities is to turn Paramount again to the number one destination for the most talented artists and filmmakers,» he said at the press conference after the meeting of the Council. For an hour, the new Hollywood tycoon was dodging as he could questions about his relationship with the president. Donald Trump, while praising CBS News and boasted of great plans to produce more Star Trek and Transformers films before this presentation, Ellison – son of Larry Ellison, owner of Oracle and the second richest person in the world – had completed the operation that, prior payment of 8,000 million dollars, makes him a majority shareholder of Paramount, owner Television CBS and MTV, and the film study of the same name. The negotiations to close the agreement lasted two years and the road was not easy. Shari Redstone, the previous majority shareholder, initially rejected Ellison’s proposal, reluctant to detach himself from the precious possession of his family. After Redstone’s decision to sell, his own executive director and several members of the Board of Directors opposed the terms and left. She went ahead, just to doubt at the last minute, insecure if she wanted to close a deal or if Ellison was the right buyer. When they finally reached an agreement in July 2024, it was only the beginning of another crisis. Trump’s administration would delay the transaction for months; He only approved it after CBS paid 16 million dollars to resolve a lawsuit for the edition of an interview with the White House candidate Kamala Harris.ellison never faltered during the negotiations. The reward for its patience is a company that has a decade in decade. Redstone’s father built his media empire with MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central cable chains, who have lost audience in favor of streaming services and social networks. The cinematographic study, meanwhile, has joined due to lack of investment, losing money during the last two and a half years. And Paramount+, the streaming service, has a much smaller market share than Amazon, Disney+, Hulu or Netflix, not to mention YouTube. Despite this gloomy panorama, the new owner is optimistic. Among sips of Coca-Cola Light, Ellison explained to journalists that he had a restructuring plan. The first shock plan is to detect inefficiencies to achieve savings of 2 billion dollars. That implies the dismissal of thousands of employees and cutting the programming of their cable television chains, according to knowledgeable sources of the plan. He would also be considering selling real estate assets and television channels in Latin America. However, Ellison’s idea is not to close Paramount+, but to invest in his restructuring.ellison does not want to waste time in the implementation of his road map. It has already closed an agreement worth 7,700 million dollars to take the exclusive rights of Ultimate Fighting Championship (the main martial arts competition), has signed the creators of the Netflix Stranger Things series and has been associated with Legendary, the responsible study of the Dune and Godzilla franchises.
New energy
All in Hollywood want Ellison to inject fresh energy into the historic study, which has suffered years of poor management and internal struggles. If you succeed, you could help revitalize an industry in crisis. Tens of thousands of people are out of work in Hollywood due to the decline of cable television, the transfer of foreigners, two work stoppages and the pandemic. Studies that once defined American culture have given their power to Silicon Valley intruders such as Instagram, Netflix and YouTube. «It is very important that Ellison triumphs,» he says. Ari Emanuel, executive president of Tko Group Holdings, Sports and Entertainment Promoter, and Star Agent. Calyison was born and grew up in Woodsis, California, an elegant town a few kilometers from the epicenter of Silicon Valley. He is 42 years old, which makes him the youngest executive director of a media company and the only one who grew up with the Internet. It is new sap in an industry governed by a gerontocracy. «Think differently and speak differently.» Jeff Shell says, president of Paramount and former executive director of Nbcuniversal Media. However, not everyone has so much confidence that Ellison becomes the Messiah that Hollywood needs. In part because it lacks experience at the head of a company of this size, and because its promises on the modernization of its technology are vague. Ellison’s agreement with the UFC surprised his rivals, none of whom approached his offer; Paramount paid the league more than double what he received with his previous agreements. Before even taking control of the company, and Ellison fought publicly with the creators of South Park, one of the most valuable assets of the company, for a new contract. On the other hand, the members of their news department are concerned that Ellison tilt the coverage to the right to appease Trump. One of the weight reasons to give Ellison’s vote of confidence would be his last name. The purchase of Paramount was financed with money from his father, Larry, and Redbird Capital Partners, a venture capital firm of Gerry Cardinale, former investment manager of Goldman Sachs. The landing in Paramount could only be the first step in the vision of the Ellison family about what a media conglomerate should be. In fact, on September 11 Bloomberg published that the clan was preparing an offer for his rival Warner Bros. Discovery. Trump himself has also suggested the founder of Oracle to buy Tiktok, a proposal that neither Larry Ellison nor his technology company have officially responded. The company’s family control allows them to think in the long term instead of obsessing with the quarterly results. «Our greatest shareholder is the second richest person in the world,» says Shell. «That seems positive.» David is reserved when talking about his father’s participation, although Oracle and Paramount are already in conversations on a 100 million dollars that would make the media company one of Oracle’s main clients. Larry has avoided the press in recent years, and the agreement for the purchase of Paramount is structured so that David officially has control. On the other hand, Larry does not have a fortune of approximately 360,000 million dollars because he is a person who bases his business decisions for sentimental reasons. Boothe encouraged the love for David’s cinema, taking him already his sister, Megan, to the cinema on weekends. David did practices in Oracle, but finally enrolled at the School of Cinematographic Arts of the University of Southern California to follow a race in Hollywood. Although he left his studies, the new Paramount owner has dedicated his career to try to demonstrate that he is not a nepo Baby. However, it has been difficult to separate from the image of «Dad’s son.» The vast majority of filmmakers who move to Los Angeles in search of stardom fails to start their career financing and acting in a 60 million dollar film. The majority of 27 -year -olds do not raise 350 million dollars from JPMorgan Chase for a producer after their first film, Flyboys, was a box office failure. Dana Golberg, who joined Skydance in 2010, the company founded by David Ellison, thus summarizes the excellent that generated in her beginnings in the industry: «People thought it was a street checkbook that only frequented luxury ships.» During the first 15 years of his career, David was not even the most prominent son of Larry in Hollywood. His sister Megan founded Annapurna Pictures in 2011 and financed several films that earned several Oscar nominations. The first Skydance Media agreement to co -finance films produced by Paramount arrived in 2010. Little by little, David focused on the most important franchises of the centenary cinematographic study as an impossible mission or Star Trek. When the third impossible mission installment failed at the box office and Tom Cruise looked like a star in decay, he was the one who most opted for the project, something that was later endorsed by the public. Cruise returned the trust with new box office balls and was even one of the star guests at his wedding with Sandra Modic.
Diversification
Ellison was diversifying his business beyond the volatile cinema business. In 2014, Skydance began producing series for television platforms and two years later raised $ 700 million to expand in the video game sector and animation. Although David rarely mentioned his father (and Skydance employees avoided mentioning him), Larry made occasional appearances at the premiere of a film and lent his extensive property of 230 acres in Sensei Porcupine Creek Resort for corporate retreats from Skydance. The two had been distant during David’s childhood, but they approached more in adolescence, traveling around the world in family superyate. When streaming services began to cut expenses in 2022, Skydance, as well as many great independent producers, entered losses in 2021. The options to reverse the situation were three: going out, getting a large Apple type technology to buy the company, or passing the attack and buying a study. Ellison had been interested in Paramount for a long time; Not surprisingly, he had been his first partner as a producer. What at first looked like a chimera, given the tiny Skydance size compared to Paramount, was gaining body with the support of a group of investors among which his father was. Ellison’s first contact with the previous owner of the study, Redstone, occurred in 2023. Two years later, the new Paramount owner tries to solve a problem that has tormented many of Hollywood’s brightest minds. Paramount’s cable networks, the business base, have been losing spectators for a decade. The company arrived years late to streaming, and its online business is not profitable enough to compensate for the drop in cable profits. Ellison could abandon their main streaming services selling them or flexing them. But he did not buy Paramount to surrender to Amazon, Netflix and YouTube. You want to win. How do you plan to do it? At the moment, according to sources close to the company, in November a drastic restructuring will begin that will include dismissals and the fusion of technological platforms. It will be invested in technology, data collection will be expedited and marketing efforts will be redoubled to stop user casualties. Drastic changes in programming are also coming. Ellison has pledged to increase cinematographic production to 15 titles per year compared to the 10 premieres of 2024.Trump almost derail the agreement that has changed life to Ellison, and Ellison is anxious to leave the controversies behind. He does not want to politicize his business, although he will not have it easy taking into account the pressures that are exercised from the White House. Paramount has promised not to edit the interviews in his star CBS News program after the criticisms of the Trump administration. In addition, he has signed the former conservative Hudson Institute as a spectator’s defender in the chain. In full debate about cancellation (although he later returned to Antena) of the Jimmy Kimmel program in ABC, owned by Disney, after commenting on the murder of activist Ultra Charlie Kirk, Ellison has reiterated that Paramount is, above all, «an entertainment company.» This declaration of intentions implies that their aspiration is to reach all audiences: children, elders, left or right voters. A purely business objective in an increasingly polarized context. This text is an edited version of the original report published by Bloomberg.
