What Are You Lot Up To?

As the Paramount chief builds a Hollywood juggernaut that could soon swallow Warner Bros. Discovery whole, a different type of construction is taking place 3,000 miles away: Sources say that President Donald Trump has greenlit plans to host one of the first UFC fights under Paramount’s $7.7 billion deal with the MMA league on the lawn of the White House. Dignitaries from around the world will attend a dinner and then head to the Octagon, the eight-sided ring where the main event will play out. Trump and UFC CEO Dana White are spearheading the telecast. The discussed date is June 14, 2026 — which coincides with Trump’s 80th birthday.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly says the fight will be “a spectacular event” that will “celebrate the 250th anniversary of our great country.”

While the spectacle might sound like a discarded scene from the 2006 dystopian comedy “Idiocracy,” it provides a glimpse into Ellison’s rising empire, one that skews alpha male and that some fear will entwine the studio’s content more closely with MAGA messaging. In rapid-fire fashion, the 42-year-old Ellison has become show business’ ultimate disruptor. The industry’s first millennial mogul wants to change the DNA of Hollywood while building a new type of entertainment leviathan out of the husk of a once-legendary film and television studio. And Paramount, which declined to comment, is just the beginning.

“We’re going after Warners,” Ellison told confidants even before the Paramount deal got the Trump administration’s approval. “I want to be in the top three, not the bottom three.”

By the accounts of many industry insiders, Ellison has been busy leveraging his family’s extraordinary wealth and access to President Trump to prepare for a buying spree. With the help of his father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison (the world’s second-richest person behind Elon Musk), the Silicon Valley scion wants to take on Netflix, Amazon and Apple; in the hypercompetitive Ellison family, there’s no prize for being runner-up. If the Ellisons pull it off, they’ll control a media empire with unprecedented reach and cultural influence.

“It’s the Wild West, and these are the new cowboys,” says producer Jon Peters, who ran Sony Pictures from 1989 to 1991. Peters says he has taken a $400 million-plus stake — roughly 4% — in Paramount since it began trading on the Nasdaq as PSKY. “Things have changed,” Peters adds, “and now we’re moving into the biggest revolution that you and I will ever see in our life, which is AI.”

When Skydance took over Paramount, it pointedly referred to itself as a media and technology company. Ellison has repeatedly said that he wants to “embrace AI,” and in meetings he alludes to having developed revolutionary ways to understand what consumers want by accessing vast troves of data. He’s fond of boasting that Oracle’s technological know-how will transform Paramount+ from a second-rate app to a dominant player with a better user experience. (Where all that data comes from remains a mystery.) Some industry observers are skeptical that it will be enough to compete with Netflix and its mighty algorithm. They also believe that even if traditional studios like Paramount and Warner Bros. combine, Netflix and the other streaming giants are so much better established that it will be nearly impossible to catch up.

“Studios are irrelevant; they’re on the ropes. They’re dinosaurs, and the age of dinosaurs is over,” says Schuyler Moore, a partner at Greenberg Glusker. “Their only move now is to consolidate, but there’s no hope even if they get bigger. They’re too late to the party.”

Not according to David Ellison, who projects an image of Paramount as a land of abundance. He wants “more content, not less,” says one source with direct knowledge of his thinking. The proof is in the mad dash his film chiefs are making to build their slate from its current eight annual releases to 15 by 2026, 17 by 2027 and 18 by 2028. Cindy Holland, who helped Netflix develop its original programming strategy and is now running Paramount’s direct-to-consumer operation, is opening the purse to bring better programming to Paramount+.

Hollywood may be wary of the Ellison family. The WGA called the prospect of Paramount buying Warner Bros. Discovery “a disaster for writers, for consumers, and for competition” and vowed to work with regulators to block the merger. But an industry still reeling from the collapse of Peak TV has been reenergized by the emergence of a new, deep-pocketed buyer. And analysts credit Ellison for embracing an expansive vision.

“They clearly have a long-term point of view,” says Jessica Reif Ehrlich, Bank of America Securities senior media and entertainment analyst. “They have a plan to invest in more compelling content, and they are executing on it.”

Since taking over Paramount, Team Ellison has embraced Mark Zuckerberg’s mantra of “move fast and break things,” spending money freely, like purchasing Bari Weiss’ The Free Press — a fledgling Substack-based news outlet — for $150 million. It has also slashed staff and dispensed with top Paramount executives at a dizzying rate, replacing them with executives with unfashionable — by Hollywood standards — viewpoints, from vocal Israel supporters (CBS News editor-in-chief Weiss) to political conservatives (Paramount co-chair Josh Greenstein), and jumped into business with a new brand of power brokers, namely White. Those who remain have faced pointed questions, often delivered in blunt tones, that betray irritation at how inefficiently the new regime feels the legacy media company
had been run.

Taking a page from the MAGA playbook, Ellison doesn’t seem to care about optics. An Oct. 29 round of roughly 1,000 layoffs hit women in high-profile roles hard. Among the 14 reported TV executives who received a pink slip — spanning CBS, BET and MTV — 11 were women. Over at CBS News, some cuts — like Tracy Wholf, a senior producer of climate and environmental coverage — were viewed as Trump-friendly moves. One staffer says that the ax conspicuously fell on those whose reporting featured an anti-Israel bent, including foreign correspondent Debora Patta, who had been covering the war in Gaza for the past three years. A source close to Paramount says the October layoffs were not motivated by MAGA politics or gender.

But Israel is an important issue. Larry Ellison is reportedly a close friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and is a prolific donor to Friends of the IDF. Weiss has been so vocal in her support of the country that she faces frequent death threats. She and her wife, The Free Press co-founder Nellie Bowles, require a detail of five bodyguards that costs the studio $10,000-$15,000 a day. There has also been a noticeable step-up in security measures around the company’s executive leadership (one insider says the entire C-suite has received threats).

Paramount’s leadership has not shied away from making its views on the war in Gaza public. In September, it became the first major studio to denounce a celebrity-driven open letter signed by A-listers like Emma Stone and Javier Bardem that called for a boycott of Israeli film institutions implicated in “genocide and apartheid” against Palestinians. (Warner Bros. followed, but cited legal reasons for its decision.) And sources say Paramount maintains a list of talent it will not work with because they are deemed to be “overtly antisemitic” as well as “xenophobic” and “homophobic.” Whether the boycott signatories are on that list is unclear.

Around the studio lot and offices, open debate about business strategy, even arguments that can grow heated, are more frequent than under the previous regime. Greenstein, a former top Sony executive enlisted to run the studio with Skydance veteran Dana Goldberg, is said to have a differing professional style from his boss, Jeff Shell, the former NBCUniversal chief who was installed as Paramount’s president. A person who observed them together compares them to “oil and water.”

Ellison has not been immune to pushback from his staff. Greenstein and Goldberg tried — and failed — to dissuade their boss from giving Will Smith and his company Westbrook an overall deal with the studio, arguing that the Oscar-slap controversy and a dodgy box office track record would result in more headaches than hits.

Despite the disagreements over strategy, there is a shared sense of urgency around the need to fundamentally transform Paramount, as the new executive leadership recognizes it must move fast to pull off its grand plans. In addition to signing talent deals with Smith and Matt and Ross Duffer, the brothers behind Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” the team is trying to assemble a slate of films that can attract audiences to theaters at a time when the box office is in a slump. Ellison personally courted “A Complete Unknown”’s James Mangold and is shelling out up to $100 million to produce “High Side,” a motocross thriller that will be the director’s next film with Timothée Chalamet. Insiders at Paramount insist that the film will cost less and no official budget has been set.

Some long-gestating productions, such as the Miles Teller sports drama “Winter Games,” have been put into turnaround, while there has also been a focus on reinvigorating certain franchises. The hope is to have a fresh “Star Trek” movie, though the studio has moved on from the idea of bringing back Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and the rest of the ensemble from the J.J. Abrams reboot. It is also working on sequels to “Top Gun” and “Days of Thunder,” with the films’ star, Tom Cruise, recently visiting the Paramount lot to congratulate the Skydance team on its takeover and to discuss a return to those franchises and other possible collaborations. (Some of the films that Paramount is greenlighting, including a movie about a cowboy and his dog searching for his missing daughter that’s been likened to a Western version of “Taken,” were described as “America-centric” and geared toward the middle of the country.)

Not everything has gone smoothly. The Skydance team was shocked when Taylor Sheridan, the creator of many of Paramount+’s biggest franchises, such as “Yellowstone” and “Tulsa King,” defected for a lucrative deal with NBCUniversal. Ellison had spent time cultivating Sheridan, flying down to Texas with Shell, Greenstein and Goldberg, where the new mogul suggested possible shows that could be additions to the Sheridan-verse. The overtures backfired, with Sheridan preferring a less corporate approach. Although Sheridan, whose content plays big in red state America and presumably would have fit in seamlessly with the new mentality, has three years remaining on his deal with Paramount, his exit leaves a big hole.

“It’s a huge loss for them,” says Ehrlich. “If you look at Paramount+, [Sheridan] is responsible for 90% of their successful programming.”

Before he leaves, though, Sheridan will help Paramount deliver on one of Ellison’s biggest priorities; he’s been tapped to write the screenplay for “Call of Duty,” an adaptation of the popular video game franchise that encapsulates the kind of patriotic, flag-waving films that the studio wants to make. Directing the film is Peter Berg, who recently said on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” “I think Trump’s doing some great things” — the type of sentiment that could land talent on a blacklist anywhere but Paramount.

In person, Ellison has an “aw-shucks” demeanor and strikes people who have worked with him as wonky, unfailingly polite and a little shy. But since he took the reins at Paramount, he’s instilled a very different climate from the left-leaning one found at most major studios. Prior to the merger, television sets in executive offices were usually turned to CNBC or CNN. Now, some employees have conspicuously changed the channel to Fox News, according to one executive. Another source, however, disputes this and says most of the offices are still being renovated and have television sets that have yet to be mounted or plugged in. Over on the Melrose lot, Greenstein boasts about hitting the shooting range, while at CBS News’ midtown headquarters, the race and culture unit — formed in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in 2020 — has been dissolved.

There’s a reason for the cultural shift. After all, Larry Ellison’s loyalty to the president has already paid off. The Trump administration greenlit the Paramount Skydance merger, despite antitrust concerns, and allowed the Oracle co-founder to be part of a consortium to acquire TikTok that also includes conservative-leaning Lachlan Murdoch. Now, Ellison advisers are privately crowing that they are the only viable choice to buy Warner Bros. Discovery given that rivals would face obstacles from U.S. regulators, whereas the Ellisons could get the deal done. Trump already has given Weiss a vote of confidence, saying that CBS News has “great potential” and that he expects coverage to be “fairer” now. For his part, Trump told a press gaggle aboard Air Force One in mid-October that Larry and David Ellison “are friends of mine. They’re big supporters of mine.” Then, with a line that could have been lifted from “The Godfather,” the president added, “And they’ll do the right thing.”

Most of Hollywood is buzzing about what the U.S. cultural landscape might look like if the Ellisons succeed in acquiring CNN — and the rest of Warner Bros. Discovery. The Ellisons have made two offers for Warner Bros. Discovery after floating a trial balloon in September about its plan to bid, which had the effect of putting the company in play. Netflix is reportedly considering making its own offer, though some industry sources believe the streamer is mostly trying to drive up the price Paramount Skydance will need to pay.

The expectation is that the Ellisons will prevail, and when they do, they’ll have access to a far richer and deeper library than the one they control at Paramount. The Burbank studio boasts DC Studios and its arsenal of superheroes, certain rights to “Harry Potter” and HBO, still the preeminent tastemaker in the television world.

However, all that premium content might not be enough to resolve the fundamental problems with the business models of legacy media companies like Paramount — namely, that linear broadcast and cable channels still account for as much as 80% of Paramount’s annual revenues. And television is losing audience rapidly to streamers. That’s created the conditions in which two of the five remaining traditional studios feel the pressure to merge — to get bigger in order to withstand the headwinds.

“Despite the volatility of the movie industry, for 100 years it was one of the most stable industries in the history of American business,” says Snap chairman and former Sony Pictures Entertainment chief Michael Lynton. “The same six players were there from the very outset, with the possible exception of RKO. And those same players stayed there without consolidation. It was almost impossible to have a new entrant because you needed a big library and distribution, and obviously that took years and years to create. Then technology companies came in. They became incredibly disruptive. That’s in large part the reason why you’re seeing what you’re seeing happening now [with the Ellisons].”

The Ellisons should be careful what they wish for; most media mergers ultimately aren’t worth the time and effort. For every smart acquisition, like Disney’s purchase of Marvel, there’s a corporate catastrophe on the scale of AOL Time Warner. Synergies often fail to materialize, and it takes upwards of three years for companies to integrate. David Ellison is aware of that tangled history, telling acquaintances that he doesn’t want any purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery to mirror Disney’s $71.3 billion deal for much of 21st Century Fox — a pact that is now widely considered to have been too costly.

“Almost every major media deal has been a disaster,” says Doug Creutz, senior media and entertainment analyst with TD Cowen. “People always convince themselves that even though they’ve all blown up in the past, this time it will work for them, and they’re almost always wrong.”

While David Ellison is the frontman in the family’s Hollywood forays, there is a sense that he is moving in lockstep with his father, who brings a mentality far different from what has reigned in Hollywood for more than a century — that the mogul with the most content wins. Instead, he follows a different guiding principle.

“Larry Ellison has a fundamental belief that the guy with the most data wins,” says Derek Reisfield, the first president of CBS New Media (now CBS Interactive) and co-founder of MarketWatch. “That’s been his mantra at Oracle. That’s what is going on with the Warner Bros. Discovery bid. And Larry wants to salt the earth so the competitors can’t come back. By buying all this now and doing it quickly when he has an advantage, it’s sort of game over for everybody else.”

Among Paramount’s competitors, Netflix is said to be most shaken by Ellison’s arrival — and his seemingly endless supply of capital. (A spokesperson for Netflix denies that characterization.) Paramount’s resurgence comes as Netflix is being targeted by the MAGA faithful with calls for consumers to cancel their subscriptions due to what they label as “woke” content aimed at kids. And Wall Street seems to have its concerns, handing Netflix, on Oct. 22, its single worst day since 2022.

Whether or not the Ellisons capture the Warners flag, they face morale problems. The first round of layoffs cut deep enough. But another 1,000 pink slips are expected globally in the second round. The prospect of full AI integration spells doom for many at a time when spirits are already low. Some say they could overlook the studio’s Trumpian turn, which could have reverberations right down to the news division. But they are incensed by the casual bloodletting of Oct. 29, carried out in a drip-drip throughout the day, stoking greater anxiety.

“I’ve lost a lot of friends. A lot of really great writers and a lot of really great journalists have lost their jobs to pay for Bari’s six bodyguards and $150 million deal,” says a CBS News staffer. “And I think that’s bullshit.”

Another Paramount executive was shocked by how coldly the company dispensed with people who had worked there for decades.

“They didn’t show a lot of respect,” the exec says. “I’ve been through other mergers, and there’s no other word to describe this one than merciless. It’s a new way of doing business.”