Bianna Golodryga, a longtime international anchor and senior global affairs analyst for CNN, is leaving the network.
Golodryga, the co-anchor of the CNN International program “One World with Zain Asher,” announced her departure Thursday in a post on X. She will make her final appearance on the network Friday, according to a CNN representative.
“After nine wonderful years at CNN, I’ve decided to leave for an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up,” Golodryga said. “I’m grateful for the experiences, friendships and support from fabulous colleagues during my CNN years. Exciting news to share very soon!”
Golodryga’s exit comes three days after Christiane Amanpour, the network’s best-known international journalist, stated her intention to leave CNN next June.
In the short term, CNN and Skydance’s CBS News are operating independently under their current leadership. But consolidation is expected at some point with international bureaus being an expected early target. There is also anxiety among the CNN rank and file over how involved CBS Editor in chief Bari Weiss will be in the combined operations.
Weiss has been a polarizing figure at CBS since Paramount acquired her contrarian digital news site the Free Press last year and gave her oversight of the network’s storied news division. She has made major changes at “CBS Evening News” and the top-rated newsmagazine “60 Minutes,” where several correspondents were fired after accusing her of pushing them to add right-wing talking points to their stories.
Golodryga, 48, arrived at CNN as a contributor in 2017 and joined the network full time two years later. She previously served as co-host of “CBS This Morning,” and was an anchor for Yahoo! Finance. She also worked for ABC News as a correspondent and co-anchor of the weekend edition of “Good Morning America.”
Golodryga, who immigrated to the U.S. as a refugee from the Soviet Union in 1980, is the co-author of a young adult novel, “Don’t Feed the Lion,” which dealt with antisemitism.
Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international anchor whose intrepid reporting became a symbol of the network’s global reach and influence, announced Monday she will end her 43-year run in June.
Amanpour, 68, told colleagues in a memo she will step away from her eponymous daily CNN program at the end of the year. She will continue her Saturday program, “The Amanpour Hour,” until May before exiting the following month.
Amanpour was one of CNN’s first breakout stars, traveling the world to report on global hot spots and helping build CNN’s strong reputation for international coverage, especially in war zones. She was front and center as the network delivered images of the first Gulf war, the Bosnian war and conflicts in Rwanda, Afghanistan, Ukraine and Iran.
Amanpour’s announcement arrives as CNN faces uncertainty under new ownership. Skydance absorbed the network as part of its $111-billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. International bureaus are expected to be the first place where CNN and Skydance’s CBS News are expected to consolidate resources. Deliberations over editorial direction are likely to be intense.
There have been reports of internal strife at the London bureau at CBS News over the tone of its Middle East coverage since Bari Weiss, a strong supporter of Israel, took over as the network’s editor in chief last year. Weiss replaced Claire Day, a longtime veteran of the network, with Shayndi Rice, a former Wall Street Journal editor, overseeing all of the network’s international operations.
In a memo to staff obtained by The Times, CNN Worldwide Chairman and Chief Executive Mark Thompson said he has discussed Amanpour’s future for several months. “Like so many CNNers who will hear the news today, I’m very sorry to see her go, but I’ve come to accept that this is the right time for her, both personally and professionally,” he wrote.
Amanpour did not offer a reason for her departure, devoting most of her memo to thanking the production crews who worked with her over the years. She said she will continue to co-host “The Ex-Files,” a podcast she co-hosts with her ex-husband Jamie Rubin, a former journalist who served in the State Department during the Clinton administration.
Amanpour was born in London and raised in Tehran. Her family fled Iran in 1979 during the Islamic Revolution. She arrived at CNN in 1983, working as a news desk assistant in Atlanta and then at its New York bureau with the ambition of becoming a foreign correspondent.
Amanpour’s reporting from war zones and ability to land interviews with global leaders made her one of the most recognizable journalists in the world. During her time at CNN, she served as a contributor to the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes.” She also served as anchor of the ABC News Washington roundtable program “This Week” from August 2010 to December 2011.
Amanpour’s work has been recognized with 16 News and Documentary Emmy Awards, four Peabody Awards, two George Polk Awards and three DuPont-Columbia Awards.
Discovery+, one of Skydance’s new streaming assets, will now cost $6.99 a month for its ad-supported tier, up $1. Its ad-free tier is also up $2, costing viewers $11.99 a month. The prices take effect immediately for new subscribers. Existing subscribers will get 30 days’ notice and see the higher rates on bills dated on or after Nov. 12.
Skydance did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The platform first launched in 2021, at $4.99 a month for its ad-supported tier and $6.99 for ad-free. Nearly six years later, the price of the cheapest tier has risen roughly 40%, and the ad-free tier has jumped about 72%. This is the service’s second price hike since January 2025.
The standalone streaming service features tens of thousands of TV episodes from cable networks like HGTV, Food Network and TLC.
Before the merger, each company maintained its own streaming services, with HBO Max and Discovery+ under Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount+ under Paramount Skydance. The services are currently operating as separate entities. But David Ellison, Skydance’s chairman and chief executive, has said he plans to merge the two platforms into one streaming service. It’s unclear when that might happen, what it would cost, or where Discovery+ fits in. The company has not publicly laid out plans for the service.
Prices for HBO Max currently range between $10.99 and $22.99 monthly. Paramount+ costs between $8.99 and $13.99 a month.
Streaming is one of the biggest open questions for Skydance as it enters a new era. The company is carrying roughly $80 billion in debt and is targeting more than $6 billion in cost savings over three years. Skydance has said those savings will come primarily from technology, procurement, marketing and real estate, and Ellison has said the bulk won’t come from layoffs. Industry observers expect that debt load to add pressure for more price increases across Skydance’s streaming lineup.
This price increase also comes at a time when many streaming platforms are similarly hiking their prices — in part to cover the rising cost of programming and talent. Discovery+ joins platforms like Netflix, Apple TV, Hulu and Disney+ which have all raised their subscription fees in the last year. Prime Video raised the cost of its ad-free add-on in April.
The Tom Cruise-led “Digger” is poised for a massive loss after ticket sales for the political satire fell 60% in its second weekend in theaters in the U.S. and Canada.
The Warner Bros. film made just $3.2 million in those theaters over the weekend, according to a studio estimate. Its opening weekend brought in $8 million, Cruise’s lowest opening as a leading man since 2007’s “Lions for Lambs.” Global ticket sales for “Digger” were only $35.3 million.
The tepid box-office returns mean the studio is now expected to lose at least $150 million on the film, including ancillary revenue streams such as premium video-on-demand and streaming, industry sources said. Historically, a film has typically needed to make 2½ to three times its budget to recoup its costs.
A Warner Bros. spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
It’s a tough result for the film, which stars Cruise as an aging oil tycoon whose company sets off an environmental catastrophe. Analysts have said that the film was challenging to market, given a major twist in the plot, and that Cruise’s nearly unrecognizable appearance could have dissuaded his fan base from coming out to support the film.
The film suffered from polarizing critical reviews, notching a 53% on aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Opening-night audiences gave it a C+ on CinemaScore, a grade that typically points to weak word of mouth and steep drops in the weeks that follow.
The budget for “Digger” raised the stakes. Warner Bros. has said the film cost $125 million to produce, though some industry experts and trade reports have estimated the cost was at least $160 million, citing production delays.
That figure also doesn’t include marketing costs, which sources said could have increased in the days after the film’s opening since Warner Bros. began using the divided reviews in social media and TV ads to encourage people to see the film for themselves.
The film will have value to Warner Bros. — and Skydance, the newly combined company that now owns it — beyond its theatrical reception. “Digger” probably will make money through downstream revenue sources such as streaming. If Cruise wins his first competitive Oscar, that also would be a plus for the film.
But a film’s domestic reception, and to some extent, its international box office revenue, does play a role in the value of those downstream revenue opportunities, experts said.
“Even with respectable ancillary income based on the film’s pedigree, the movie is going to lose a lot of money,” David A. Gross wrote in his FranchiseRe movie industry newsletter shortly after the film’s opening.
The reception for “Digger” comes during a tough time for Warner Bros.
The studio has had a string of disappointments this year, including Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride!” and DC Studios’ “Supergirl.” None of its 2026 releases has crossed $100 million at the domestic box office.
But the prospects for Warner Bros. should improve next year, according to the research and brokerage firm Bernstein. Skydance has said it will keep the Warner Bros. and Paramount studios distinct, though Paramount Pictures chiefs Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein are expected to oversee both. Bernstein expects the Warner Bros. film and TV studios to amass $11.7 billion in revenue, driven by strong titles that include the sequel to “Minecraft” and a new “Lord of the Rings” movie.
Tech scion David Ellison spent three years doggedly pursuing his dream: acquiring Paramount, then Warner Bros. Discovery.
Ellison pulled off his bold feat this week by completing Paramount’s $111-billion takeover of Warner Bros., uniting two industry pioneers and a wealth of cherished properties — Batman, Bugs Bunny, Harry Potter and Maverick of “Top Gun,” as well as CBS, HBO, Comedy Central and CNN. All will be tucked under a corporate umbrella that Ellison is calling Skydance — the name of the studio he formed two decades ago.
The mogul and his lieutenants celebrated their victory in style, ringing the New York Stock Exchange opening bell on Thursday, capping a bruising battle to secure approval of a deal that had sparked protests across Hollywood over fears of looming job cuts.
Ellison and his team must braid together two huge film studios (housing nine film labels), four streaming services, three TV production studios, three animation units and more than 50 television networks, including two prominent news organizations. That could be a daunting task, particularly based on how previous Hollywood mergers have fared.
“Now, the real work begins,” David G. Fubini, a Harvard Business School senior lecturer, said in an interview.
Anxieties were evident Tuesday — the day the deal closed — when Ellison held a town hall meeting at Warner Bros., which drew nearly 500 employees.
During the session, CNN’s Anderson Cooper quizzed his new bosses, including about anticipated layoffs and news independence.
“Do you stand with CNN and our effort to completely restore access to covering President Trump?” Cooper asked, referring to CNN’s legal fight alongside MS Now and Politico to reverse the president’s ban on the three organizations.
“Of course,” Ellison replied.
CNN news anchor Anderson Cooper, pictured here in 2021, quizzed his bosses at a Burbank town hall.
(Evan Agostini / Invision / Associated Press)
Hours later, Ellison parried with reporters in Paramount’s darkened Stage 3, recently revamped with laser projection capabilities to simulate fantastical and far-flung settings for TV shows, such as the streets of New York.
“This was a turbulent process, and, at times, a really ugly process, to actually get this deal over the finish line,” Ellison acknowledged to reporters. “What I want to be able to do now is turn the page, and actually make sure that we are in the business of rebuilding trust.”
To do that, Ellison intends to make more movies and TV shows than rivals. He wants to ensure the Warner Bros. and Paramount studios, which will be kept separate for now, remain talent-friendly destinations.
Ellison has taken an opposing view from his predecessors who confronted crumbling industry economics by cutting expenditures to boost their corporate bottom lines.
The 43-year-old executive, son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, proudly views his family as “owner-operators,” unshackled by quarterly earnings expectations or the need to dole out dividends to keep investors happy. The Ellison family controls the company’s voting stock, allowing David Ellison to take a long-term view as he charts Skydance’s course.
The goal is to “win in storytelling,” Skydance said in an investor presentation. It intends to build the media industry’s most “technologically capable” firm, which uses artificial intelligence to speed work flows. Skydance plans to spend at least $30 billion a year on film, television and video game content.
Skydance co-CEO Ynon Kreiz, Sarah Ellison, CEO David Ellison and investor Gerry Cardinale of RedBird Capital Partners on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday.
(Yuki Iwamura / Associated Press)
The realities of Ellison’s big swing will soon sink in as he and his team turn their focus to integrating the myriad operations and about 55,000 employees.
In some ways, Ellison is behind the curve.
Most major mergers are consummated after executives have dedicated months to quietly drafting detailed operational plans and organizational hierarchies. Ellison, in contrast, has spent the last nine months in a pitched battle for Warner Bros. — ultimately vanquishing Netflix, hundreds of vocal merger opponents, and California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and his coalition of 11 other state attorneys general who filed an antitrust lawsuit in July in an attempt to derail the deal.
Ellison and Bonta resolved their legal fight Sept. 21. A week later, a federal judge cleared the way for the merger to close.
The lawsuit settlement with Bonta requires that the combined company produce at least 30 movies a year for five years. It also must maintain the studio facilities in Los Angeles, making “reasonable efforts to operate the lots in a manner consistent with past practices,” according to the agreement.
Skydance has committed to maintaining operations on the Warner Bros. lot, pictured here, and at Paramount Pictures in Hollywood.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
Ynon Kreiz, former chief executive of Mattel toys in El Segundo, has been tasked with leading the integration. The 61-year-old executive joined Ellison at Skydance as his co-CEO earlier this week. Day One of the combined company marked Kreiz’s second day on the job.
“They have a whole new management team that will be expected to immediately lead this massive integration,” Fubini, a former partner at consulting firm McKinsey, said. “The clouds have cleared, and they are at the base camp of Mt. Everest facing this enormous undertaking.”
In a report this week, TD Cowen Global Research maintained its “hold” rating on the newly constituted Skydance, expressing some doubts about Ellison and his team’s ability to “avoid integration and execution problems that have bedeviled other major media mergers.”
Hollywood has had a history of failed mergers, including Discovery’s 2022 takeover of WarnerMedia from AT&T, which led to years of cost cuts that ultimately seeded the ground for Ellison’s takeover. AT&T’s purchase of the same assets in 2018 also quickly unraveled, some 20 years after the epic failure of AOL Time Warner.
Ellison now must grapple with the hefty acquisition costs for Warner Bros., which climbed as the deal was delayed. The company emerged from the transaction with $86.8 billion in total debt; with most of that going toward buying out Warner Bros. Discovery’s stockholders at $31.17 a share.
The debt burden also includes more than $18 billion in obligations leftover from past mergers. Skydance has nearly $7 billion in cash on hand.
Oracle’s Larry Ellison and executive producer David Ellison arrive at the L.A. premiere of “Star Trek Into Darkness” at the Dolby Theatre in 2013.
(Eric Charbonneau / Getty Images for the Hollywood Reporter)
The Ellison family brought in foreign investors, including royal families of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi as passive owners, to contribute equity to the deal. Gerald Cardinale’s RedBird Capital Partners, a longtime Skydance stakeholder, added $4 billion, bringing its total investment in Skydance deals to $6 billion.
The deal’s financial terms pose deep challenges, analysts said. Fitch Ratings this week downgraded Skydance credit, citing “materially higher leverage after the acquisition and significant execution and integration risks,” according to its report.
“Interest rate increases made financing this transaction far more expensive than anyone anticipated,” said Eric Talley, a professor at Columbia Law School. “Those lenders are going to start expecting their interest payments — Skydance executives won’t have the luxury of time.”
The company could struggle, Talley said, to “generate the cash flow needed to easily service that debt unless they can significantly cut costs.”
Skydance has promised investors that it will make $6 billion in cost cuts over three years. It anticipates $2 billion in reductions within a year, with the bulk of the rest occurring in the second year of the merger.
“They are going to be firing a lot of people,” TD Cowen Global Research media analyst Doug Creutz said.
During the press briefing, Kreiz sought to downplay the expected workforce toll, saying Skydance would achieve savings by combining technologies that support streaming services and marketing expenditures. It plans to save costs on real estate by locating employees at Skydance-owned properties in Santa Monica, Hollywood and Burbank.
Ellison and Kreiz said they would jointly manage the new colossus.
“Where David will focus on creative, technology, long-term strategy, including especially as it relates to the creative part of the business, I will focus more on the operations and the day-to-day management of the business,” Kreiz said.
Kreiz was named to Skydance‘s expanded board this week along with Laurene Powell Jobs, founder of the Emerson Collective; and Bobby Kotick, former CEO of Activision.
The new leaders expressed confidence they could expand and integrate their two major streaming services to drive growth. HBO Max and Paramount+ combined will reach more than 200 million subscribers.
The plan, they said, is to combine the two streamers within a couple of years, but the company may offer subscribers a bundle with the two offerings sooner.
Skydance, according to sources, also expects to bolster its free, ad-supported service Pluto TV, which offers more than 200 channels. The service hasn’t had much corporate attention in recent years amid the cuts and deal-making.
The executives have not disclosed which teams would soon be affected or how they will structure overlapping business units.
For example, the company’s three TV studios each have their own leader: Channing Dungey runs the largest, Warner Bros. Television; David Stapf has long managed CBS Studios; and Skydance executive Matt Thunell has been president of Paramount Television Studios since last year.
Integrating CNN and CBS
Anxiety over whether CNN and CBS News would be mashed together was quelled, at least for now.
Skydance announced that it was retaining CNN Worldwide Chairman Mark Thompson as head of the larger news organization. CNN journalists had worried that CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss, who has presided over a year of turmoil at the network, would be put in charge of both.
Any news consolidation could take years, in part, because CBS News is largely unionized while CNN is a non-union shop.
“We are going to spend the next several months basically getting under the hood,” Ellison said.
CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss, pictured here in 2023 in Los Angeles, has had a turbulent tenure at CBS.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
Another challenge will be stabilizing the Warner Bros. film unit, which has had a rough year at the box office. This month, the top two Warner Bros. film executives, Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdy, exited abruptly, clearing the way for longtime Ellison lieutenants Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein to oversee both film studios. The co-heads of DC Comics, James Gunn and Peter Safran, segued to the new Skydance.
Skydance also will have to deal with the NFL, which could demand substantially higher fees for CBS to keep its Sunday games.
The current contract allows the league to reopen negotiations because of the ownership change. Skydance is hoping it can wait three years until the contracts of other broadcasters also are up for discussion.
Skydance will be a major player in sports. Last year, Paramount agreed to spend $7.7 billion for UFC fights. The combined company also has rights to professional golf, including the Masters tournament; National Hockey League; Major League Baseball and NCAA basketball, including March Madness, as well as European rights to televise the Olympics.
“Until you actually get inside the company, there are things you won’t know,” Creutz said. “But they are going to have to come up with answers pretty quick.”
By naming the product of two mergers Skydance, David Ellison relegates two of Hollywood’s founding studios to a sub-brand stew and attempts to erase a bunch of controversial hires.
What a surprise. David Ellison has decided to name the Frankenstudio media company created by the merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery simply Skydance.
And why not? “Massive Debt Funding Media” doesn’t really roll off the tongue (though “Ultra Leveraged” has a nice ring); “Ellison and Dad” is a bit too on the nose; and “Skydance” is, after all, the name he chose for the one company out of those four that he built rather than bought.
Skydance is a poetic term with some definite “Star Wars” overtones and perhaps unintentional symbolism. Before the aviation-loving Ellison claimed it, “sky dance” referred to the aerial mating of certain birds, most famously the American woodcock, also known as the timberdoodle or (I’m not making this up) the bogsucker.
(“Timberdoodle Media,” now that’s a splendid name, and “Bogsucker Productions” could work as well.)
In his attempts to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, Ellison has certainly engaged in some high-flying … well, courtship might not be the right term for the dizzying mix of cajoling and threats he has employed to get the deal done, and it certainly does not seem fair to the American woodcock. I’m no expert, but I don’t think their mating rituals involve using the New York Times to plead their case or, when that doesn’t work, threatening to move en masse to Tennessee.
For those inexplicably hoping for ParaBros, Skydance seems a bit of a letdown, especially considering all the trouble Ellison went to. It’s been quite a show, the various razzle-dazzle versus strong arm tactics (not to mention the Middle Eastern money) he mobilized to turn two of Hollywood’s preeminent founding studios into ingredients in sub-brand stew that also includes CNN, HBO Max, CBS, DC Comics, Nickelodeon, MTV and Food Network.
Overseeing such a diverse mix is obviously too big a job for one person so Ellison added yet another flavor by drafting Ynon Kreiz as co-chief executive. Kreiz was previously chairman and chief executive of Mattel, where he facilitated the toy company’s big Hollywood push with “Barbie,” “Masters of the Universe” and the upcoming Hot Wheels movie. (Polly Pocket, now in development at Reese Witherspoon’s Sunshine Productions, should be preparing for her close-up.)
By sticking with Skydance, Ellison is not just making a large swath of Hollywood indisputably his own, he’s showing remarkable confidence in a name that first came to many people’s attention in 2019 when he hired John Lasseter.
Six months after Walt Disney Co. ended its relationship with the then-chief creative officer of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios following an investigation into multiple accusations of sexual harassment and workplace misconduct, Ellison hired him to oversee Skydance Animation.
Unsurprisingly, this led to all manner of protest, within and outside the company. When Emma Thompson learned of Lasseter joining Skydance, she withdrew from its highly anticipated upcoming animated film “Luck.” In a stinging letter she sent to the company at the time (and allowed The Times to make public), she wrote: “It feels very odd to me that you and your company would consider hiring someone with Mr. Lasseter’s pattern of misconduct given the present climate in which people with the kind of power that you have can reasonably be expected to step up to the plate.”
Lasseter was not Skydance’s only controversial hire. After merging with Paramount, the company made deals with or hired multiple men, including Brett Ratner, Max Landis and Jeff Shell, who had been accused of sexual harassment and/or misconduct.
Shell was made president of Paramount less than three years after losing his job as NBCUniversal chief executive following the disclosure of an “inappropriate relationship” with an NBC employee. He stepped down from Paramount in April after a monthslong legal battle with a Las Vegas gambler and self-described “fixer” who claimed that Shell had reneged on a deal to develop a series in exchange for free crisis control.
Now, of course, all of that is ancient history. Now Paramount is merely a sub-brand and Hollywood is less concerned with who Skydance hired as it is with who, and how many, Skydance will fire.
Also how exactly the CNN/CBS oversight committee Ellison agreed to create as part of the settlement with 12 states is going to work. And what will happen if Skydance does not release 30 new films each year, which Ellison has promised to do as part of the settlement deal. And how expensive the new Skydance streaming bundles are going to be. And if, perhaps, in some language Skydance translates to “the end of the entertainment industry as we know it.”
Most important, is it too late for the American woodcock to sue?
David Ellison said the merged Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery will be called Skydance — the moniker he picked nearly two decades ago when the tech scion began building his Hollywood empire.
Ellison, currently the chairman and chief executive of Paramount, is aiming to finalize the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery by Tuesday. Then the combined company will assume the name and logo of his once small studio.
“We chose this name for a few important reasons,” Ellison wrote Friday in an X post. “As we bring Paramount and Warner Bros. together, we wanted to preserve what has made each of these studios iconic. Both have distinct identities, extraordinary legacies and brands that have resonated with audiences … We never wanted a new corporate identity to diminish, alter or overshadow either one.”
By calling the company “Skydance,” Ellison said the merged entity would have “an identity of its own while allowing Paramount and Warner Bros. — and all our extraordinary brands — to remain in the spotlight.”
In Hollywood, there had been much speculation over what jumbled mash-up of the corporate titles would be used, with WarnerMount and Paramount-Warner Bros. often mentioned as possibilities.
Both companies boast century-old studios, beloved media brands and a recent past that has included several fraught mergers. When AT&T sold WarnerMedia to David Zaslav’s Discovery in 2022, he selected Warner Bros. Discovery as the corporate name.
The merger is quickly reaching the finish line after U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín on Wednesday signed a settlement agreement, effectively ending an antitrust lawsuit brought in July by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and 11 other state attorneys general who initially fought the formation of a new Hollywood colossus. Paramount now has won approvals by nearly 70 regulators for the industry-reshaping deal.
For more than a decade, Paramount has been the smallest of the major media companies, owning CBS, Comedy Central, BET, Nickelodeon and the Melrose Avenue studio. With the $111-billion merger with Warner, Skydance will gain more valuable assets including HBO, CNN, TBS, Food Network and Warner Bros. film and television studios, along with their massive libraries that include the Harry Potter, “Lord of the Rings,” and DC Comics franchises.
Earlier this week, Ellison announced he was bringing Ynon Kreiz, who has served as the CEO of toymaker Mattel for eight years, to run the new entity’s day-to-day operations. Kreiz, 61, brings years of operational experience that Paramount’s top executives had lacked.
Paramount released details of Kreiz’s contract on Thursday in a regulatory filing, saying he would receive an $5 million annual salary and an annual target bonus of $4.9 million. He will also qualify for a signing bonus of $31.5 million to come over to the new company, paid through restricted stock units.
In addition, HBO Chairman Casey Bloys is widely expected to become head of the merged company’s streaming programming. Paramount’s streaming chief Cindy Holland exited the company earlier this week to make way for Bloys.
During a Thursday appearance at the Bloomberg News Screentime media conference in Hollywood, Bloys declined to discuss his presumed new role. But he suggested that that Ellison’s company might bundle HBO Max and Paramount+ services, allowing the two services to remain for now, rather than try to fold them into one gigantic offering.
Skydance will carry than $80-billion in debt, much of it acquired to retire the holdings of Warner Bros. Discovery investors at $31.17 a share. The company also has promised investors that it would find $6 billion in cost-cuts within three years.
During a separate appearance at the Bloomberg conference, RedBird Capital Partners founder Gerry Cardinale, a Paramount investor and board member, said finding $6 billion in cuts would be relatively easy, and would not be focused solely on layoffs. It would include combining the technology stacks for the various streaming platforms.
But Cardinale acknowledged layoffs would be part of the cost-cuts, a prospect that frightened many in Hollywood after endless waves of job cuts at the two companies.
Warner’s outgoing chief executive Zaslav will leave with a golden parachute valued at about $887 million, which includes cash, stock and options valued at more than $550 million, according to regulatory filings.
In addition, Warner board members separately agreed to pay Zaslav’s tax bills, which could approach $330 million.
