The day after Paramount’s $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery closed and the combined company became Skydance, management answered the question the whole industry had been asking. All of its direct-to-consumer services, including Discovery+, “will unify into a single service over time.” No timeline was given, and the existing apps keep running for now while the company works on interim bundles, phased account moves and shared back-end systems.
The scale is the story. The combined services have well over 200 million subscribers, though it is not clear how much the subscriber bases overlap. HBO Max’s share is nearly double Paramount+’s, which is likely to shape the branding of whatever emerges; WBD previously tried to drop HBO Max for just “Max” before reversing. CEO David Ellison said in March that the combined service would have a little over 200 million direct-to-consumer subscribers, and Pluto TV stays as the free experience alongside the premium service.
The integration has a content chief in place. HBO’s Casey Bloys was elevated to co-chair and chief content officer of Skydance DTC in the October 5 leadership announcement, with oversight of HBO Max and Paramount+ original programming, and Ellison has said HBO will keep its creative independence. On the film side, Warner’s Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy are already out, with Paramount Motion Picture co-chairs Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg running the combined studio; James Gunn and Peter Safran continue at DC Studios. Sheridan’s contract runs out in 2028, when his Yellowstone universe moves to NBCUniversal.
Skydance is promising theaters at least 30 theatrical films a year, with around 36 combined releases possible next year including a Superman sequel, a Minecraft sequel and “A Quiet Place Part III.” The domestic box office, up 19.5 percent from last year and crossing $8 billion this week, gives the company a healthier theatrical market than the one the deal was struck in. The $6 billion cost-cutting target and the debt load north of $80 billion remain the other side of the ledger.