NEW YORK, October 6. /TASS/. Paramount has finalized its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, granting CEO David Ellison control over a vast media empire that holds some of Hollywood's most valuable assets, The New York Times reports.
The combined entity has been named Skydance Corporation and should immediately challenge Netflix and YouTube in the streaming market, though it remains smaller in scale than industry giants Disney and Amazon.
Ellison secured the deal for Warner Bros. Discovery following a months-long bidding war with rival contender Netflix, during which he submitted nine separate offers for the company. The deal also faced a lawsuit from a coalition of state attorneys general who sought to block the transaction on antitrust grounds.
Ultimately, the lawsuit was settled after a series of concessions, including the establishment of an independent editorial board to safeguard CNN's journalistic autonomy. Ellison also pledged to spend an additional $1.5 billion on motion pictures over the next five years. Skydance argued that the merger was a necessary counterweight to big tech platforms.
