David Zaslav says goodbye to Warner Bros. Discovery staff in farewell video
David Zaslav has said farewell to Warner Bros. Discovery staff in a three-minute video, a day before the sale of the company to Paramount is due to close.
The video was shared with employees on Monday, Oct. 5, ahead of the Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery merger scheduled to close on Oct. 6, according to Variety. Variety said it had viewed the clip, which is available only on WBD’s internal portal.
Zaslav appears alone in the video. He sits in a director’s chair in the Loft warehouse at Warner Bros. Studios’ Ranch facility in Burbank, California, and speaks directly to staff.
The farewell includes a montage of company output. Clips feature The Pitt, The Lego Movie, Barbie, One Battle After Another, Dune, Hacks, Friends, House of the Dragon, White Lotus, Abbott Elementary, Sinners and Shark Week, alongside Harry Potter titles plus CNN and WBD sports programming.
The goodbye caps four years with Zaslav as president and chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery. In 2025, his pay package totalled $165 million, including a one-time stock options grant valued at $109.6 million awarded on June 12, 2025.
That June grant was tied to work on a plan to split WBD into two publicly traded companies, one holding HBO, HBO Max and the studios and the other holding most of the linear television networks plus Discovery+. That split did not go ahead because of the deal to sell the company to Paramount Skydance. Zaslav is set to receive a golden parachute payout, meaning an exit payment triggered by the change of ownership, of at least $550 million when the merger closes.
The same report put WBD’s turnaround in numbers. The company recorded a pro-forma EBITDA loss, a published earnings measure, of about $2.1 billion for full-year 2022 and generated $1.4 billion in EBITDA profit in 2025.
What comes next is a new name and new leadership. The merged company run by David Ellison will adopt the name Skydance Corp. Ellison has named Ynon Kreiz as co-chief executive of the anticipated combined Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery company, effective Oct. 5, 2026, according to Paramount. Ellison and Kreiz also announced their chief executive leadership team for Skydance following the anticipated close, according to Paramount.
For staff, this means a handover week. One chief executive signs off on video. Another team takes the slate.
