Paramount and WB will soon merge into Skydance, and the studio will now own Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, DC, Star Trek, Mission Impossible and more.
HBO
The Paramount and Warner Bros. merger is set to finalize on Tuesday, Oct. 6, in a $110 billion deal. It’s a little hard to get a sense of the true scale of this with the combination of the two media giants into “Skydance,” the new name of the joint operation. But David Ellison is helping us out with some handy graphics he seems eager to share.
The list is almost comically large. The full scope of high-profile IP rights alone is hard to comprehend, even compared to other large studio rivals. Now we know exactly what will be under Skydance, and just how sprawling its reach will be. Here are the properties (film rights, with many TV rights as well):
- Star Trek
- Gremlins
- Beetlejuice
- DC Comics
- Tom & Jerry
- Harry Potter
- Citizen Kane
- Transformers
- A Quiet Place
- Looney Tunes
- The Conjuring
- Mortal Kombat
- Game of Thrones
- Dora The Explorer
- Mission Impossible
- The Lord of the Rings
- SpongeBob SquarePants
- Avatar: The Last Airbender
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
- Dune 3 (distribution rights)
- Minecraft (distribution rights)
- MonsterVerse (distribution rights)
Are Tom and Jerry not Looney Tunes? I always thought they were Looney Tunes. Anyway, that’s not the point. Paramount has siphoned some of the biggest properties in the world with this deal, especially the likes of DC, Harry Potter and Game of Thrones from WB. Also, other enormous hitters like Mission: Impossible, Lord of the Rings, The Conjuring, Star Trek and more are under its umbrella. And perhaps a Citizen Kane cinematic universe is on the way.
Ellison also showed off the grand list of channels and streaming services Skydance now owns:
- TNT
- CBS
- CNN
- MTV
- TCM
- Showtime
- Adult Swim
- DC Studios
- Paramount+
- Nickelodeon
- HBO/HBO Max
- Comedy Central
- Cartoon Network
There is also an official launch trailer showing off the new and old properties that has been fashioned for this, set to Hans Zimmer’s Time.
Obviously, you can see the concerns about media consolidation here, which has been a frequent topic of conversation among both fans of these properties and those in the entertainment industry. Mark Ruffalo previously said the deal would “stifle creativity, weaken free speech, and cost people their jobs.” Other figures like Denis Villeneuve, J.J. Abrams and Lin-Manuel Miranda have signed letters and petitions against the merger. Given that the deal isn’t finalized and we don’t yet know the outcome, needless to say, many are nervous about what will come next.
It is no surprise that Ellison is trotting all this out as a big triumph. There have been long-running WB content plans in place, mapping out the next few years, and we don’t know what might shift as a result of this. The big changes will officially start next week.
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