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David Ellison’s rocky box office history

admin — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 13:08:07 +0000

Chairman & CEO Paramount David Ellison attends the UFC 324 event at T-Mobile Arena on January 24, 2026 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Jeff Bottari | Ufc | Getty Images

If there’s one thing that Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison knows well, it’s an impossible mission.

Ellison, producer of five of the “Mission: Impossible” films, has been trying to buy Warner Bros. Discovery for nearly six months. In September, he sent an initial, unsolicited offer to WBD, prompting the rival media company to explore a sale process that resulted in an agreement with Netflix to sell the famed Warner Bros. film studio and WBD’s prestige streaming assets.

Ellison launched a hostile tender offer and, separately, was welcomed back to the negotiating table with WBD under a seven-day waiver from Netflix. This week, Paramount upped its offer for the entirety of WBD and unseated Netflix’s deal after the streamer declined to match the revised bid.

The Warner Bros. movie studio is a big part of why Ellison has been so committed to winning over WBD’s board and its shareholders.

Last year, Warner Bros. was the second-highest grossing studio at the domestic box office. Paramount was fourth.

A longtime Hollywood executive, Ellison has produced some massive hits at the box office, but his track record has been far from consistent.

Where Netflix has a fraught relationship with theatrical releases — disrupting the traditional business and opting for years to prioritize streaming films for its subscribers — Ellison’s production company, Skydance, has followed the tried-and-true theatrical playbook.

Taking ownership of Warner Bros. would have been a game changer for either company.

“If a merger were to be approved, the entity that then grabs up Warner Bros. would add tremendous horsepower both in terms of brand identity and revenue generating potential to their portfolio,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Comscore. “So, it is understandable why the competition is fierce.”

A history of Skydance at the box office

Skydance released its first theatrical feature in 2006, a World War I drama featuring James Franco as a U.S. fighter pilot. Over the last two decades, the studio has launched nearly 30 films, the majority of which were in partnership with Paramount, according to data from Comscore.

Paramount and Skydance completed their merger, engineered by Ellison, in August.

Skydance’s biggest successes have come from one source in particular — Tom Cruise. The studio’s six highest-grossing films globally all star Cruise, including five “Mission: Impossible” films and the breakout 2022 hit “Top Gun: Maverick.”

Highest-grossing Skydance films globally

“Top Gun: Maverick” (2022) — $1.4 billion
“Mission: Impossible — Fallout” (2018) — $791 million
“Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” (2011) — $694 million
“Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation” (2015) — $682 million
“Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” (2025) — $599 million
“Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning: Part One” (2023) — $571 million
“World War Z” (2013) — $540 million
“Star Trek Into Darkness” (2013) — $467 million
“Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” (2023) — $441 million
“Terminator Genisys” (2015) — $440 million

Source: Comscore

Having a billion-dollar film under your belt is no small feat, especially in the wake of the pandemic.

The theatrical business has been in flux in recent years as consumer habits have shifted, studios grapple with how long movies should play in cinemas before hitting the home market, and streaming siphons away potential releases.

For comparison, Disney has released six billion-dollar films since 2021: “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “Inside Out 2,” “Deadpool & Wolverine,” “Moana 2,” “Zootopia 2” and “Avatar: Fire and Ash.”

Warner Bros. had 2023’s “Barbie,” Universal had “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” that same year, and Sony had “Spider-Man: No Way Home” in 2021, according to Comscore data.

Tom Cruise in “Top Gun: Maverick”

Source: Paramount

However, “Top Gun: Maverick” is a bit of an outlier for Skydance. In addition to being the studio’s only billion-dollar film, it’s also the only film in its library to exceed $230 million domestically.

In fact, only five of Skydance’s features to date have generated more than $200 million in the U.S. and Canada.

Skydance’s highest-grossing domestic films

“Top Gun: Maverick” (2022) — $718 million
“Star Trek Into Darkness” (2013) — $228 million
“Mission: Impossible — Fallout” (2018) — $220 million
“Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” (2011) — $209 million
“World War Z” (2013) — $209 million

Source: Comscore

Globally, the production company has seen seven of its films generate more than $500 million in ticket sales, which would be a bigger feat — if budgets for many of these films weren’t so high.

“The challenge for Ellison and Skydance, as it is for every studio, production company, and distributor, is to keep budgets in line particularly for latter installments of major franchises as these tend to have diminishing returns as compared the earlier releases to justify the continued investment in these movie franchises,” said Dergarabedian.

Of course, Skydance split production costs with its studio partners, so it’s unclear exactly how much the company put toward each film it produced. Still, many of its franchise films saw budgets balloon with each new installment.

Look at the most recent Mission: Impossible film. “Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning” generated $599 million at the global box office, the fourth-best showing for a film in the franchise. However, the film had a reported budget of $400 million. That’s before marketing costs, which usually run at about half of the production budget.

General views of the TCL Chinese Theatre promoting the new Tom Cruise film ‘Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning’ in IMAX on May 23, 2025 in Hollywood, California.

Aaronp/bauer-griffin | Gc Images | Getty Images

So, Skydance in conjunction with Paramount would have spent an estimated $600 million ahead of the “The Final Reckoning’s” release in theaters. And that $599 million brought in from ticket sales gets split.

Studios share box-office proceeds with theater operators, typically in a 50-50 split by the end of a film’s run in theaters.

The result is often a movie that performed well at the box office, but ultimately was not profitable for the studios that produced it. And unlike some franchises — think Marvel, Star Wars or Harry Potter — Mission: Impossible doesn’t have a robust merchandising arm or as much demand from fans for things like toys, apparel or collectibles.

A mountain of content

In merging with Paramount, Ellison’s Skydance now has more properties that fall under the production company’s designation. That includes the lucrative Sonic the Hedgehog franchise and upcoming films like “Scream 7,” “Paw Patrol 3,” “Street Fighter,” “Scary Movie 6” and “Focker-in-Law,” the latest installment in the Robert De Niro-led Meet the Parents franchise.

However, Paramount’s slate of franchises still aren’t quite the heavy hitters that WBD carries on its roster.

Still from Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 2.”

Paramount

“Warner Bros. is one of the crown jewels of the theatrical distribution,” said Dergarabedian. “Their slate of films, filmmaker relationships, brand recognition, and reputation as one of the premier and iconic movie studios makes them a coveted asset by any player in the entertainment space.”

WBD has in its library DC’s superheroes, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Looney Tunes and Scooby-Doo. It is also the distributor of Legendary’s Dune and Godzilla and King Kong franchises.

“In Paramount’s specific case, the studio’s box office market share has often been challenged to keep pace with competitors and its own peak performance in the years leading up to 2015,” said Shawn Robbins, director of analytics at Fandango and founder of Box Office Theory. “While occasional hits such as the Sonic, A Quiet Place, and Scream franchises have provided bright spots, plus ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ catching lightning in a bottle four years ago, some of the studio’s most bankable IP has seen diminishing returns among modern moviegoers.”

Paramount Skydance needs consistency at the box office and well-known and beloved franchises are one way to do that. Of course, just having a big name doesn’t guarantee box-office success, but it lowers the barrier to entry.

“Paramount is looking to mine every opportunity it can following the recent conclusion of Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible series, the regression of Transformers from its biggest blockbuster dollar days, and the cinematic dormancy of Star Trek as that brand has been re-focused toward multiple streaming series targeted at its predominately older audience,” Robbins said.

Disclosure: Versant is the parent company of CNBC and Fandango.

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CNN staffers are reportedly loathing a potential Paramount Skydance takeover — but don’t expect the Ellisons to kill the news agency

admin — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 09:35:04 +0000

The word inside CNN is that staffers are thrilled that their parent, Warner Bros. Discovery, agreed to merge with Netflix instead of Paramount Skydance. They fear the latter’s Trump-friendly owners, Larry and David Ellison, would kill the network once they get their grubby hands on “The Most Trusted Name In News.”

The Ellisons may be MAGA- friendly, but there’s low odds they’re in this to kill CNN, as I will explain in a bit. Meanwhile, the likely scenario under the Netflix deal, according to my Wall Street sources, is far worse for the CNN rank-and-file: The cable channel, which still generates cash, will be spun off as part of a public company answering to public shareholders. Not fun, given the debt on its balance sheet and demands to show a profit.

Even worse, Wall Street executives say the network will ultimately be spun out of that spinout and sold — likely to a rapacious private equity firm that sees news as a nuisance, opting to slash and burn to generate ever-bigger profits so it can eventually sell what’s left to somebody else.

Consider, for a moment, what the Ellisons are offering. Unlike Netflix, they’re buying not just the streaming and studio business, but the cable properties as well. People who work for the father-and-son duo say they want to grow cable as part of a global, integrated media empire that sells both CNN and CBS in cable packages.

CNN staffers are said to particularly loathe the idea they would be working for Bari Weiss, who runs CBS for the Ellisons and has moved the Tiffany Network to a more friendly posture to conservatives (aka the 77 million people who just voted for Donald Trump whom you want as viewers).

But Weiss is hardly channeling hard-line MAGA at CBS, and the Ellisons’ partner in the pursuit of WBD, RedBird Capital, is run by savvy veteran media banker Gerry Cardinale. He employs a handful of journalists, including former CNN anchor Chris Wallace and longtime CNN chief Jeff Zucker. Wallace, I understand, will play a key role in CNN’s future if Paramount Skydance prevails.

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Indeed, it’s CBS that could be moving its news-gathering operations to CNN’s Atlanta headquarters, I am told. It will be the Tiffany Network’s cash-strapped news operation that needs to downsize the most as they combine operations, which makes sense if you compare the numbers of both networks.

CNN churns out an estimated $500 million to $600 million in annual cash flow, I am told. (WBD doesn’t break out its financials; this is an estimate from an ex-senior exec.) That’s pretty darn good considering the network’s third-place ratings among the cable news giants, and it shows there’s a business here because cable news carriers believe it has an audience.

Ellisons wouldn’t kill it

It’s also why the Ellisons wouldn’t kill it as the many inside the network fear despite the fact cash flow has been halved from just five years ago. There will be cuts and those dreaded synergies that bankers talk about, but that’s a far better future than CNN being at the mercy of some PE bean counter.

No matter how much shade is thrown at Larry Ellison’s backstop of his son’s hostile offer for Warner Bros. Discovery, the Oracle co-founder is still worth more than $240 billion and will use it to invest in a business where CNN won’t be a nuisance but the tip of the spear in Paramount’s news operations.

And if you’re at CNN and worried about the Ellisons’ political motives (Larry was an early Trump supporter), I don’t think they’ll be Trump patsies. Based on recent comments by the president (he said they weren’t such great friends), neither does he.

Suffice to say, lots of paranoia here, and real proof that many journalists need to spend some time taking finance 101: Netflix in “winning” the monthslong WBD bake-off is just buying WBD’s Warner Bros. studio and HBO Max streaming service, while CNN and WBD’s other cable properties are spun out to the wilderness as a publicly traded company with an estimated $15 billion to $18 billion of debt.

Charlie Gasparino has his finger on the pulse of where business, politics and finance meet

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That’s right: A news company with lots of debt answering daily (based on its stock price) and quarterly (based on its earnings) to analysts and investors demanding a return in a business that’s declining because of cord cutting and more.

CNN has been busy slashing costs in recent years, but this means cuts will get steeper to make the numbers work given the trajectory of rising debt service payments while cash flow from the cable properties is going in the opposite direction.

For the record, I’m not gloating over CNN’s uncertain future. True, I work at a competitor, Fox News, along with my duties at The Post, but I’m a journalist who believes the business needs to survive because you can’t have a functioning democracy without it. Trump rips the network’s political commentators, but CNN’s news product is formidable, with bureaus around the world reporting 24/7.

Journalism writ large is a tough business, so if you’re in it like I am, you better hope for an owner who doesn’t see news as a nuisance.

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Warner Bros. Discovery CEO’s bidding war destroyed the initial confidence of the Ellisons — but don’t count them out just yet

admin — Sun, 07 Dec 2025 08:32:10 +0000

David Zaslav just pulled off one of the greatest media mergers of the century — but that doesn’t mean he’s done wheeling and dealing.

The wily CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery has sold the media giant for $72 billion — more than doubling its value in a matter of months. He may get even more, depending on whom you talk to, capping one of the more momentous executive comeback stories in recent years.

Before we get into why the cake isn’t quite baked on WBD’s future, let’s consider what just went down with Zaslav’s mosh-pit-style bidding war, how he set some of the biggest media moguls against each other, ramping up the sale price of his company to levels no one thought possible.

When all this began in September, WBD’s stock was in the toilet, trading at around $12 a share, just above its one-year low of $7.50. That’s when Paramount Skydance saw value where no one did, except maybe Zaslav; they offered $23.50 — or around $56 billion — for all of WBD, its studio, the HBO Max streaming service, as well as cable channels CNN, HBO and Discovery.

It was thought to be a done deal. Paramount Skydance’s deep-pocketed owners, David and Larry Ellison, promised WBD shareholders all cash for an asset that was teetering, and a regulatory glide path through the Trump administration given the elder Ellison’s close friendship with President Trump.

Not quite. Zaslav is a protégé of two of the best CEOs in recent history, Jack Welch and cable pioneer John Malone. That put him in line to become CEO of newly created Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal engineered by Malone, formed after the AT&T spinoff of Warner Media in 2022.

Money-losing assets

Warner’s assets included a major studio that lost money, an unprofitable streaming service, and old media cable channels like HBO, CNN, TNT and the Food Network. Zaslav was saddled with billions in debt. He took heat cratering shareholder value while paying himself millions.

Larry Ellison, chairman and chief technology officer of Oracle Corporation, sits in the Oval Office of the White House as President Donald Trump signs an executive order, Monday, Feb. 3, 2025, in Washington. AP

What the market and media naysayers didn’t appreciate is that he was scaling down a bloated operation and improving the Warner studio — it became the first to surpass $4 billion in revenues in 2025. He was also building up his streaming service, finally settling on a name, HBO Max, which is now the industry’s third largest.

To his credit, David Ellison saw that potential early on — even as he was in the throes of trying to buy Paramount from the initially reluctant Redstone family, and then maneuvering through the odd maze of the Trump administration’s regulatory apparatus.

He saw that he could combine CBS with CNN, bail out Paramount’s feeble streaming network with HBO Max, and supplement Paramount’s studio with Warner’s, gaining tons of intellectual property with some of the most iconic programming in recent history, such as “The Sopranos,” “Harry Potter” and “Game of Thrones.”

Charlie Gasparino has his finger on the pulse of where business, politics and finance meet

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Nearly the moment David and Larry swooped in with an initial offer for all of WBD three months ago, the larger bidding war was on. As the Post first reported, Zas began pitching a sale of some or all of the company to Amazon, Apple and others. In the end, he settled on a bidding contest among Comcast, Paramount Skydance and Netflix. Zas, as he’s known in media and Wall Street circles, set his price target at $30 a share and deal participants scoffed: Who would pay $30 a share for something that traded at around $7 just a few months ago?

Misplaced confidence

The Ellisons appeared particularly confident they could underbid since the Trump administration, as we reported, wanted WBD in the Ellisons’ hands. Trump and Larry Ellison are friends, Larry being a long time MAGA supporter. Plus the deal seemed the cleanest of all the bidders without much overlap to present antitrust worries.

Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison speaks during the Bloomberg Screentime conference in Los Angeles on October 9, 2025. AFP via Getty Images

Trump was also said to like the idea of the Ellisons controlling CNN, which he considers anti-MAGA. DOJ Antitrust sent out word it didn’t like all those streaming customers — Netflix’s 300 million plus another 100 million of HBO Max — in one company.

But the bids kept growing. Netflix’s Ted Sarandos was sold on Zaslav’s pitch to supplement his streaming empire with a top-flight studio that can produce namebrand, home-grown content. Now lusting for a deal, Sarandos met with Trump and developed a friendship he and Zaslav believe will mollify the regulatory hurdles. Comcast kept bidding up as well as its chief, Brian Roberts — despite his fraught relationship with Trump for owning the MAGA-hating MS NOW — tried to smooth things over with big gifts to build the new White House ballroom.

The Ellisons recently came in at $30 a share; Netflix sealed the deal at $30.75.

The Ellisons hate losing and are planning a counterattack; they might bid even more or go hostile, arguing their all-cash offer is higher than Netfix’s cash and stock even if its total price beats theirs by 75 cents.

How’s that for creating shareholder value?

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