David Ellison Is Moving Fast and Spending Big to Remake Hollywood
The industry is rooting for him to revive Paramount. His pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery has some worried.
Newly minted Hollywood mogul David Ellison is trying to make good on a promise he made to former Paramount film chief Sherry Lansing.
Soon after closing his $8 billion purchase of Paramount, Ellison told the board member, “we’re going to go off like a rocket,” she said in an interview.
He’s been spending like he meant it.
This stretch has been frenetic even for speed-loving Ellison. Flying planes since he was a teen, he recently boasted about being one of the top 10 aerobatic pilots in the country when he was in his early 20s and having flown 300 miles an hour and 15 feet off the ground.
Less than three months into his reign at Paramount, Ellison has signed a $7.7 billion agreement to bring Ultimate Fighting Championship matches to the Paramount+ streaming service and CBS, lured “Stranger Things” creators Matt and Ross Duffer from Netflix, and bought the news and opinion site the Free Press and installed its chief Bari Weiss as editor in chief of CBS News.
On top of that, the 42-year-old movie producer-turned studio chief has made three bids in the past six weeks for Paramount’s bigger rival, Warner Bros. Discovery, a sign of his ambition to reshape the media and entertainment industry.
All of those overtures have been rebuffed by Warner Discovery, according to people familiar with the matter. His offers, backed by his father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, pressured the board to put the company on the auction block earlier this week.
If Ellison succeeds in acquiring Warner Discovery, he would command an entertainment behemoth whose holdings would include the Warner and Paramount movie and television studios, the Paramount+ and HBO Max streaming services and dozens of cable networks including CNN and Comedy Central.
It would also be a meteoric rise for someone who has only just become chief executive of a publicly traded company.
Many in the industry were rooting for Ellison to get control of long-moribund Paramount. Now, though, there is significant trepidation about him adding Warner Discovery to his portfolio. Paramount itself is bracing for a wave of layoffs next week that will be in the thousands. Combining the company with Warner Discovery would likely result in even more job losses.
Filmmakers in particular are worried about two more major studios combining, which could further shrink an already challenged film industry.
Warner Bros., once seen as Hollywood’s crown jewel, released the most movies, offered talent the most lavish deals, and produced hit TV shows for numerous networks. After changing owners in a series of acquisitions, the studio has downsized significantly.
Warner has had a banner year in 2025 thanks to hits including “A Minecraft Movie,” “Superman” and “Sinners.” But its motion-picture division laid off 10% of its U.S. staff in July, showing that no amount of box office success can make up for the economic pressure faced by its parent company.
Ellison and his team have signaled they want to keep Warner Bros. Pictures operating separately from Paramount Pictures following a merger, according to a person familiar with the matter. But many in Hollywood fear the combined company would release fewer movies than the two have been producing under separate ownership.
The grimmest possibility for the filmmaking community is that Warner would become a production label under Paramount, like the former 20th Century Fox studio has become at Disney. This year the 20th Century label is releasing a handful of movies in theaters. In 2018, the last full year before it was acquired by Disney, 20th Century Fox released around a dozen films.
A Warner Discovery acquisition would require government approval. President Trump has publicly praised the Ellisons and attended UFC matches with David. Analysts say that bodes well for the combination receiving a blessing from the administration.
Ellison got bit with the film bug as a teen, seeing movies with his mother and his younger sister Megan—also a movie producer—and going to the University of Southern California to study filmmaking.
Deciding he could learn more on a set than in a classroom, Ellison dropped out and began acting. He co-starred with James Franco in “Flyboys,” a 2006 movie about World War I pilots that was funded mostly by his father. After a second movie he was planning to act in fell apart, he pivoted to producing full-time.
With cash from his father and mentors including Steve Jobs and David Geffen, he launched Skydance Media in 2010.
“He very much embraces disruption as a positive to forward the industry,” said Gerry Cardinale, managing partner of RedBird Capital, which helped back his takeover of Paramount.
Ellison’s flying experience also helped in the making of the hit “Top Gun: Maverick,” which Skydance made with Paramount.
“He was really up-to-date on all the new aviation,” said “Top Gun: Maverick” producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who added that sometimes Ellison was too far ahead of the curve on the latest planes. “We had to tell David, ‘Listen, we can’t do it with that plane. The Navy only has a few of them and they’re not gonna give them to us,’ ” Bruckheimer said.
Ellison soon showed himself to be a sharp dealmaker and producer. His first movie from a co-financing deal with Paramount was the 2010 Joel and Ethan Coen-directed western “True Grit,” a box office and critical success that garnered 10 Oscar nominations.
Skydance quickly became a major producer of movie and television shows, including the hit “Reacher” for Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service and “Grace and Frankie” for Netflix. Ellison realized though that he needed more heft to compete against big tech and established studios.
Skydance, with backers including the Ellison family and RedBird, agreed to acquire Paramount parent National Amusements from the Redstone family and merge the storied media company with his production firm.
The deal got caught up in a lengthy regulatory review that, while frustrating, gave Ellison time to plan for his next acquisitions and start considering Warner Discovery so that he could build an entity that could truly compete with Netflix and have plenty of intellectual property to fuel a strong theatrical business, people familiar with his thinking said.
“I think he sees that there is a great landscape sitting out there right now that he can be part of leading,” said Citi Global Chair of Banking Leon Kalvaria, who advises Ellison.
To run Paramount, he assembled a team of high-profile executives including Jeff Shell, a former chief executive of NBCUniversal, and Cindy Holland, the architect of Netflix’s original programming strategy.
“The last eight weeks have just been thrilling to watch,” said Lansing, the former Paramount movie chief.
Barry Diller, the entertainment mogul who led Paramount for a decade in its heyday, said in an email, “Most people, coming into senior executive positions, on scrutiny, fail to impress. David Ellison, on scrutiny, continues to impress.”
Were Ellison to acquire Warner Discovery, a likely scenario would be combining operations of CNN and CBS, people familiar with the matter say. While the move would give CBS News journalists a cable platform and there could be tremendous cost savings, it could lead to further cuts and consolidation. No plans have been cemented, a person close to Ellison said.
Already Weiss has made waves in her three weeks at the network by asking employees to send a memo detailing their jobs. Ellison said at the time of the Weiss hire that his goal is for CBS News to “to speak to that 70% of the audience that would really define themselves at center-left to center-right.”
One thing Ellison is expected to part with, at least for now, is his Maverick-like flying habit.
“I told him he’s my key man, we’re going to tone that down a bit,” Cardinale joked.