Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery merger closes to create Skydance

Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery have finished their merger. The new company is called Skydance.

The deal closed on 6 October, according to Deadline. It brings together two of Hollywood's oldest studio names, plus their television channels and streaming services, under one owner.

Shares in the new company start trading Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery have been discontinued on the Nasdaq.

The listing will use Class B shares. They will move from Nasdaq to the New York Stock Exchange on 6 October and trade under the ticker symbol 'SKYD', according to Reuters. A ticker symbol is the short code investors use to find a stock.

David Ellison is chief executive of Skydance. Ellison and Ynon Kreiz have also announced their chief executive leadership team for Skydance following the close, according to Paramount.

The closing follows a fight over competition. In July, the attorneys general of 12 states filed a lawsuit seeking to block the deal on antitrust grounds, meaning concerns that the merger would reduce competition. The Writers Guild of America filed a similar lawsuit.

Those state cases will not go to trial. The attorneys general agreed to settle with only behavioural remedies in a five-year consent decree, meaning a court-enforced settlement that controls how the company behaves rather than forcing it to sell assets.

As part of that settlement, Skydance agreed to negotiate pay-TV deals for Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery as though they were still separate companies. Pay-TV deals are the contracts with cable and satellite providers that carry channels and decide what subscribers pay.

The road here was long. Warner Bros. Discovery's board had unanimously recommended shareholders reject Paramount's tender offer in December 2025, according to a company statement. A tender offer is a direct bid to shareholders to buy their shares.

Paramount Skydance said it later secured clearances in nearly 70 countries worldwide. On 30 September 2026, Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery announced the anticipated closing date of the merger, according to a joint statement.

For viewers, this means one company now controls the schedules. That covers cinemas, broadcast and cable channels, and streaming. Behind each schedule are crews of hundreds and writers' rooms whose next series order, renewal or cancellation now runs through Skydance.