Paramount Skydance + Warner Bros.
Last week, the Netflix/Warner Bros./Paramount merger story had come to a close and Paramount’s aggressive counter-tactics undid the initial partnership formed by Netflix and Warner Bros. announced late last year. Warner Bros. had set a date for this month to vote on which company in which the shareholders would vote to merge, but Netflix would also allow final discussions take place with Paramount. As it turns out, Paramount’s offer was deemed superior by Warner Bros. Discovery and Netflix would bow out of the entire thing, with a nice little termination fee to walk away with.
HBO Max and Paramount+ become one
According to The Hollywood Reporter, David Ellison outlined his business plan in a Monday morning investor call, which included the announcement of merging HBO Max and Paramount+ into one giant streaming service.
Ellison explained during the investor call,
As we said, we do plan to put the two services together, which today gives us a little over 200 million direct to consumer subscribers. We think that really positions us to compete with the leaders in the space. At Paramount, by the middle of this year, we’ll have completed the consolidation of our three services under one unified stack, and you can see us taking a similar approach to this platform going forward. And we think the combined offering, and given the amount of content and what we can do from the tech side, really will put us in a position to be able to compete with the most scaled players in DTC.”
He also made sure to note that the HBO brand will “operate with independence.” Ellison continued to expound,
Casey[Bloys] and his team do absolutely a remarkable job at HBO. And as we said, we do plan for that to be able to operate with independence, so that HBO can, candidly, do what it does incredibly well. Our viewpoint is HBO should stay HBO. They built a phenomenal brand. They are a leader in the space, and we just want them to continue doing more of it. But by bringing the platforms together, all of our content will be able to reach even a broader audience than we can do standalone.”
Ellison reassures 45-day theatrical windows
Ellison would follow up his streaming platform announcement with his promise that he is committed to the 45-day theatrical window for movies to screen before being dropped on video-on-demand. THR also made sure to note that the new super studio “will be formed under a $79 billion mountain of net debt.”
