Skydance to keep both studio lots and split film and TV bases

Skydance will keep both the Paramount lot in Hollywood and the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank for at least the next five years, with films based on one and television and streaming on the other.

Chief executive David Ellison set out the plan at a press event on the Paramount lot on Tuesday, hours after the merger closed. He said the company will keep both sites and will probably organise film on one lot and TV and streaming on the other, according to Deadline.

The commitment answers an early question about the $81 billion combination of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, which officially completed on 6 October, as reported by the New York Post. A US judge had entered an order allowing the deal to close, Reuters reported, and Paramount closed without selling assets, with guardrails in place after a lawsuit by states, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The combined company is called Skydance. Ynon Kreiz was announced as co-chief executive alongside Ellison on 30 September, Skydance said in a company statement.

The five-year pledge on the lots comes from the settlement of that state attorneys general lawsuit. It requires Skydance to hold both historic bases rather than consolidate or sell one.

Size helped shape the thinking. The Warner Bros. lot in Burbank is significantly larger than the Paramount lot in Hollywood. The Warner Bros. Second Century Development sits next to the Burbank site, giving extra room to grow.

Ellison also mapped where senior leaders will sit. Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, co-chairs of the motion picture group, are based at Paramount. Channing Dungey, head of the Warner Bros. Television Group and Skydance’s basic cable networks, meaning channels sold through pay-TV bundles, is based at Warner Bros.

Television and streaming leadership is spread across the two sites. George Cheeks is co-chair and chief content officer of Skydance TV. JB Perrette is co-chair and chief business officer of Skydance TV and DTC, meaning direct-to-consumer, the streaming business that sells subscriptions straight to viewers. Casey Bloys is co-chair and chief content officer of DTC, with Bloys and Perrette heading that division together. David Stapf is CBS Studios president and Matt Thunell is Paramount TV Studios president.

The Burbank base gives television production a larger home. CBS no longer has its former Radford site, CBS Studios Center, which was sold in 2022.

For viewers, this means no quick studio move or shutdown. Crews stay where they are. Writers’ rooms and production teams keep their lots while bosses decide which labels make shows where.