Paramount Closes $110 Billion Warner Bros. Discovery Deal to Form Skydance
Paramount completed its $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday, October 6, 2026. The deal is closed.
The combined company is called Skydance. It trades under the ticker "SKYD," with David Ellison as CEO, according to closing-day accounts from The Verge and CNBC.
That puts HBO, CBS News and CNN under one owner. The technology involved includes streaming services delivered directly to viewers, traditional broadcast systems, newsroom production tools, and the rights systems that link them together.
The road to close took months and involved a rival bidder. Paramount reached its agreement to buy Warner Bros. Discovery in February after a months-long contest with Netflix. Before that wider Paramount deal moved ahead, Netflix had agreed to buy Warner Bros.' streaming and studio businesses TechCrunch.
The formal record started earlier. Warner Bros. Discovery's board unanimously told shareholders to reject a Paramount Skydance tender offer dated December 8, 2025, in advice disclosed December 17, 2025. Warner Bros. Discovery later set April 23, 2026 as the shareholder meeting date to approve the transaction with Paramount Skydance.
That position changed in February. Warner Bros. signed a $110 billion deal with Paramount on the morning of Friday, February 27, 2026, as disclosed by an executive that day Reuters. Paramount issued a press release the same day titled "PARAMOUNT TO ACQUIRE WARNER BROS. DISCOVERY TO FORM NEXT-GENERATION GLOBAL MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY."
Approval from regulators came in September. Paramount settled with 12 states that sued to block the deal on antitrust grounds, including a settlement with California and other states reported September 21 that removed a legal block on the takeover Reuters. On September 30, 2026, a U.S. judge entered an order allowing Paramount to close the $110 billion purchase. That same day, Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery announced the expected closing date.
From tender fight to close
The sequence lists a December tender rejection, a February contest with Netflix over streaming and studios, an April shareholder vote, and a September court order. Company control, content rights, and regulatory review moved forward at the same time.
A bid limited to streaming and studio businesses covers streaming services and a content library. The winning bid, for the whole company, adds live news, broadcast operations, and theatrical distribution.
The ticker record changed over time. A December 2025 Warner Bros. Discovery disclosure referred to Paramount Skydance trading on NASDAQ under the ticker PSKY. Closing-day reporting lists the combined Skydance company as trading under "SKYD."
Terms, conditions and leadership
The state settlement set operating requirements, not only a payment. Under the settlement, Skydance must release at least 30 theatrical films in years one and two of the next five years. It must also spend at least $300 million more on U.S. production than the two companies spent combined last year.
Those requirements set minimums for theater releases, studio capacity use, and orders for new productions over the next five years.
Leadership is shared. David Ellison will lead Skydance alongside Ynon Kreiz. Kreiz is the former chairman and CEO of Mattel. Ellison is identified in closing coverage as CEO of the new Skydance company.
The broader context here is control of the full chain from studio to viewer. Skydance now owns scripted libraries, two news operations, broadcast capacity and theater distribution. That means fewer internal licensing borders in the combined catalog, but more work in access rules for who can watch what, personalized recommendations, ad insertion, and live news delivery at scale.
In my view, the near-term work is basic and extensive. Account logins and billing, content systems and metadata cleanup, recommendation screens, and newsroom software do not combine by press release. The settlement keeps production volume up while that work happens, which keeps new supply steady even if apps are reorganized. The hopeful point is simple. A company required to release films in theaters and spend more on U.S. production is pledging to make more, not only to shift rights. Households already switch between apps without thinking about owners. If Skydance can make discovery simpler across shows and live news in one system while keeping CBS News and CNN as separate editorial operations, viewers face less friction. The risk is one we have seen in past media mergers, where cost cuts slow product work just when streaming systems need steady updates.
