We love it when companies buy each other, don’t we folks? We can all agree Disney buying 900 things has been great for the entertainment landscape, consumerism, and society as a whole. Why yes, I am being sarcastic. But we live in a capitalist hellscape and this kind of thing will keep happening. Case in point, we now have David Ellison’s Skydance Media reaching an agreement with Shari Redstone to buy out her majority stake in National Amusements, which in turn gives them control over all of Paramount Global, including Paramount film and TV studios, Paramount+, CBS, and cable channels like Nickelodeon, MTV and Comedy Central.
We saw the news via The Hollywood Reporter. The buyout is still pending regulators’ okay, but assuming all goes through, Ellison would become the CEO of Paramount, with former NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell (currently working for RedBird Capital, one of the financiers of the deal) taking over as president. Evidently the months-long speculation over whether the Skydance/Paramount deal would happen depended on kicking enough benefit to other shareholders besides Redstone. Rich people need to make sure they get more rich, after all.
This kind of thing sucks, but as I said, it’s bound to keep happening. How this will change things like Paramount+’s rates or programming, or whether the cable networks will keep operating as they are, will shake out in the near future. Hopefully they don’t prematurely cancel Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. That’d be worst case scenario for old Kyle Anderson.
Kyle Anderson is the Senior Editor for Nerdist. He hosts the weekly pop culture deep-dive podcast Laser Focus. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Instagram and Letterboxd.