Paramount's year-long pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery ended Tuesday when the $110 billion acquisition officially closed, creating one of the largest media conglomerates in history under the new name Skydance, trading on public markets under the ticker symbol "SKYD."
The combined entity brings together two of Hollywood's most storied film studios and controls nearly one-third of basic cable programming. CEO David Ellison, the son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, spent more than a year navigating competing bids, boardroom rejections, and a legal challenge from state attorneys general before securing the deal.
The road to closing was anything but straightforward. Warner Bros. Discovery had initially announced in June 2025 a plan to split into two public companies — one focused on streaming and studios, the other on global networks — as media companies grappled with declining linear viewership and a broad shift to streaming.
Paramount first signaled its interest in September 2025, when it began preparing a bid for WBD. The company was rejected three times by WBD's board before Warner Bros. Discovery opened itself to a broader sale process in October 2025, acknowledging "unsolicited interest" from multiple parties, including Netflix and Comcast.
By mid-November 2025, all three companies had submitted formal bids. Netflix and Comcast targeted only WBD's film and streaming assets — chiefly Warner Bros. studio and HBO Max — while Paramount pursued the entirety of WBD, including its linear TV networks.
Netflix appeared to prevail on December 5, 2025, announcing a deal to acquire WBD's film and streaming assets worth nearly $83 billion on an enterprise basis. Paramount responded three days later with a hostile all-cash bid of $30 per share directed straight at WBD shareholders. "We're really here to finish what we started," Ellison told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" at the time. "We put the company in play."
WBD's board unanimously rejected that offer in January 2026, even after Larry Ellison guaranteed to backstop Paramount's financing. Paramount followed with a lawsuit against WBD and CEO David Zaslav, asking a court to compel greater transparency on how the company chose Netflix over Paramount.
The tide shifted in mid-February 2026, when Netflix granted WBD a seven-day waiver to reopen talks with Paramount. By February 24, WBD confirmed Paramount had raised its offer to $31 per share in cash. Netflix declined to match the figure, and its deal for Warner Bros. Discovery fell through on February 26.
Paramount's revised offer also included an agreement to cover the $2.8 billion breakup fee that WBD would owe Netflix if that transaction did not proceed, along with a "ticking fee" payable to WBD shareholders in the event regulatory approval was delayed.
The path to Tuesday's close followed a series of regulatory approvals and the resolution of an antitrust challenge from state attorneys general, according to the timeline of events.
Ellison had been building toward an ambitious content strategy even before the WBD acquisition was finalized. Within days of Paramount's merger with Skydance closing in August 2025, he secured the multiyear rights to TKO Group's UFC in a $7.7 billion deal, acquired rights to produce a film based on the Call of Duty franchise, and signed a multiyear deal with "Stranger Things" creators the Duffer Brothers — moves he framed in a shareholder letter as part of a plan to "define the next era of entertainment."
With the WBD acquisition now complete, Skydance faces the immediate task of integrating two sprawling media organizations while managing the ongoing structural pressures — cord-cutting, streaming competition, and rising content costs — that prompted WBD's original breakup plan in the first place.
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