David Ellison has built a Hollywood giant in Skydance. Now he wants to make it a tech company

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The mega-merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, which took effect on Tuesday, symbolizes Big Tech’s ascendance in Hollywood.

It also represents an opportunity for the newly combined company, Skydance, to take cues from tech companies and transform the entertainment industry.

Tech is a big part of Skydance’s sales pitch to Wall Street, where CEO David Ellison will be ringing the opening bell later this week. For every reference to timeless storytelling and Ellison’s personal love of film, there’s also been a reference to state-of-the-art tech capabilities and the creation of a “cohesive global entertainment platform.”

On Monday, Ellison’s newly named co-CEO Ynon Kreiz said Skydance will “build the most technologically capable media company through a modern tech platform to enhance the user experience, improve how we work and achieve operating efficiencies.”

Tech was invoked nine times in Ellison and Kreiz’s press release about the new company’s leadership team, which includes veterans of Google, Facebook and Scale AI.

The executives have signaled that they will employ artificial intelligence tools — which Ellison has called a “force multiplier” — throughout the business.

And they will move to upgrade the tech stack that powers streaming services like HBO Max, one of the many Warner assets that Ellison has sought to buy for the past year. CNN is also a part of Skydance as of Tuesday.

On Tuesday morning, Skydance promoted the merger as a good thing for consumers, saying they can “expect greater innovation from a company built with technology at its core, including significant improvements to its direct-to-consumer streaming products, which will unify into a single service over time.”

Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

The formation of Skydance is a stunning achievement for Ellison, 43, who first launched a small production company in Hollywood two decades ago.

With financial backing from his father Larry, an Oracle co-founder and one of the richest men in the world, Ellison took control of Paramount in August 2025 and immediately began bidding for Warner, which is many times larger than Paramount.

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav rebuffed Ellison’s offers over and over again. Warner initially agreed to a deal with Netflix instead. But Ellison eventually made a superior offer, spurred at least in part by Paramount’s need to gain scale in the streaming wars.

To Hollywood veterans, the message was clear: With extraordinary backing from Larry Ellison’s Silicon Valley fortune, a tech scion had bought his way to the center of the entertainment universe.

Now, with Warner’s assets coming aboard, Skydance will reach more than 200 million streaming subscribers globally.

The merger “creates a new formidable global streaming competitor,” Needham & Co. analyst Laura Martin wrote Tuesday.

The merger will also unite two of the five biggest Hollywood studios; dozens of television channels; and two of the biggest US TV news divisions, CNN and CBS News.

As in any merger, there’s a lot of unglamorous backend work to be done. The stakes are especially high here because the new company is highly leveraged, with roughly $80 billion in debt and an aggressive timeline to pay it down.

Ellison’s management team will have to cut costs assertively, in part by streamlining some of Paramount and Warner’s overlapping tech platforms.

When Skydance executives promise to tech-ify the company, “I hear layoffs,” eMarketer Senior Analyst Ross Benes told CNN.

At the same time, he added, there is clearly work to be done to improve the company’s tech infrastructure.

Skydance said Tuesday that most of the cost savings will come from “technology, integration and procurement, marketing and real estate rationalization.”

“There’s numerous streaming services between the two companies, and they probably need some tech investment to just unify those and make them simpler,” Benes said. Compared with rivals like Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video, “both Paramount+ and HBO Max aren’t the best user experience.”

Those two streaming services will likely be offered together as a bundle. And “we’re going to unify the tech stacks across direct-to-consumer,” Gerry Cardinale, a key architect of the merger, said at the Bloomberg Screentime conference last week.

Cardinale remarked that “the only way Hollywood is gonna move into this next phase, and level the playing field with the guys up north” in Silicon Valley, is to “turn yourself into more of a technology company.”

But that’s easier said than done in an industry that’s accustomed to shipping films, not software updates.

Furthermore, Skydance faces intense skepticism for consolidating so many studios and platforms under one corporate roof. Merger opponents said the deal would limit opportunities for a broad range of storytellers.

“How are monopolies ever good for any industry? They squeeze out competition. They squeeze out innovation. They limit growth,” said Janet Grillo, a professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and a former executive at New Line Cinema.

Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images

Skydance is competing for attention in a media environment completely reshaped by Silicon Valley.

YouTube is the most-watched service on American TVs and it continues to improve the experience for creators and viewers with features such as customized feeds and dynamic video thumbnails. For many people, YouTube simply is TV.

At the box office, some of this year’s biggest hits have come not from major studios but from young filmmakers who got their start on YouTube and marketed their films online.

And that’s not to mention the growing amount of time audiences spend watching two-minute “microdramas” produced for TikTok. (Larry Ellison was instrumental in the deal that kept TikTok online in the US, and Oracle owns a stake in the venture. Oracle also oversees storage of Americans’ TikTok data.)

Meanwhile, AI is creating new ways of doing everything from editing content to crafting entire characters — while potentially reducing human jobs.

Ellison told CNBC earlier this year, “I do not believe that AI is a replacement for human creativity. I really view it as a force multiplier for basically filmmakers in the creative communities to be able to realize their visions more fully, and think it’s going to be an incredibly powerful tool for this industry.”

Especially for a company like Skydance with many decades worth of intellectual property. AI could provide new opportunities for licensing — potentially building out a revenue stream that Kreiz knows well from his years as CEO of Mattel. Last year Disney tested a novel licensing approach for its animated characters with OpenAI’s Sora AI video app, although the app shut down just months later.

Ellison has made several key hires from Silicon Valley to support his ambitions.

Last year he hired Dane Glasgow, a Google and Meta alum, as Paramount’s chief product officer. In May, Glasgow recruited former General Motors Chief AI Officer Barak Turovsky to be head of consumer AI. Turovsky previously spent more than a decade at Google applying AI to some of its core products, including Search and Ads.

In August, Paramount added Nick Lee, who spent four years working on AI at Microsoft and 16 years at Google before that, and Suzanne Pellican, whose prior eight years at Google included improving its ads product with AI. And just last week, the company announced two more AI executives.

“There is a significant opportunity to use AI to change how users discover and enjoy what they watch,” one of those hires, Nikhil Mehta, said in a LinkedIn post.

The merger also represents generational change, as David Ellison is decades younger than many of his counterparts. His relative youth may or may not translate to a level of tech fluency that will set Skydance apart.

Last fall, for instance, Ellison greenlit a live-action movie based on the “Call of Duty” video game franchise, partly because he is a lifelong fan.

But legacy media companies like Paramount and Warner are a long way from actually coming up with the next “Call of Duty” on their own.

The formation of Skydance is the culmination of a long-held dream — but long-term success will require it to become more than a Hollywood empire.

As Ellison said last year, on the day he took over Paramount, “Unless you can build a tech product that is truly competitive with what’s coming out of Silicon Valley, you can’t compete.”

贾斯汀·沙利文/盖蒂图片社

派拉蒙影业和华纳兄弟探索频道的超级合并于周二生效，这象征着大型科技公司在好莱坞的崛起。

这也为新合并的公司 Skydance 提供了一个机会，使其能够借鉴科技公司的经验，并改变娱乐行业。

科技是Skydance向华尔街推介其业务的重要组成部分，首席执行官大卫·埃里森将于本周晚些时候在华尔街敲响开市钟。除了提及永恒的故事讲述方式和埃里森对电影的个人热爱之外，他们还强调了公司最先进的技术能力以及打造“一体化全球娱乐平台”的愿景。

周一，埃里森新任命的联合首席执行官伊农·克雷兹表示，天空之舞将“通过现代技术平台打造技术能力最强的媒体公司，以增强用户体验，改进我们的工作方式，并实现运营效率”。

在埃里森和克雷兹关于新公司领导团队的新闻稿中，“科技”一词出现了九次，该团队包括来自谷歌、Facebook 和 Scale AI 的资深人士。

高管们已表示，他们将在整个业务中运用人工智能工具——埃里森称之为“力量倍增器”。

他们将着手升级HBO Max等流媒体服务的技术架构，HBO Max是埃里森过去一年来一直试图收购的众多华纳资产之一。截至周二，CNN也已成为Skydance的一部分。

周二上午，Skydance 将此次合并宣传为对消费者有利的一件事，称他们可以“期待一家以技术为核心的公司带来更大的创新，包括对其直接面向消费者的流媒体产品进行重大改进，这些产品将随着时间的推移统一为一项服务。”

克里斯·皮泽洛/Invision/美联社

对于 43 岁的埃里森来说，成立 Skydance 是一项惊人的成就，他二十年前在好莱坞创办了一家小型制作公司。

在父亲拉里（甲骨文公司联合创始人，也是世界上最富有的人之一）的财政支持下，埃里森于 2025 年 8 月接管了派拉蒙影业，并立即开始竞购华纳兄弟影业，华纳兄弟影业的规模是派拉蒙影业的许多倍。

华纳兄弟探索频道首席执行官大卫·扎斯拉夫多次拒绝了埃里森的提议。华纳最初转而与Netflix达成协议。但埃里森最终提出了更优厚的报价，这至少部分是出于派拉蒙需要在流媒体大战中扩大规模的考虑。

对于好莱坞老前辈来说，这个信息很明确：凭借拉里·埃里森在硅谷的巨额财富，一位科技巨头的继承人已经用金钱买下了娱乐界的中心。

如今，随着华纳的资产加入，Skydance的全球流媒体用户将超过2亿。

Needham & Co. 分析师 Laura Martin 周二写道，此次合并“打造了一个新的、实力强大的全球流媒体竞争对手”。

此次合并还将联合好莱坞五大制片厂中的两家；数十个电视频道；以及美国最大的两个电视新闻部门 CNN 和 CBS 新闻。

任何并购案都有大量不起眼的幕后工作要做。此次并购的风险尤其高，因为新公司负债累累，债务高达约800亿美元，而且还款期限非常紧迫。

埃里森的管理团队将不得不果断削减成本，部分措施是通过精简派拉蒙和华纳一些重叠的技术平台。

eMarketer 高级分析师 Ross Benes 告诉 CNN，当 Skydance 的高管承诺要让公司实现技术化时，“我听到的却是裁员的消息”。

与此同时，他还补充说，显然还有很多工作要做，才能改善公司的技术基础设施。

Skydance周二表示，大部分成本节约将来自“技术、集成和采购、营销和房地产合理化”。

贝内斯表示：“这两家公司旗下拥有众多流媒体服务，他们可能需要一些技术投资来整合这些服务，使其更加便捷。” 与 Netflix、Disney+ 和 Amazon Prime Video 等竞争对手相比，“Paramount+ 和 HBO Max 的用户体验都不是最佳的。”

这两个流媒体服务很可能会捆绑销售。合并案的主要策划者之一格里·卡迪纳尔上周在彭博社举行的Screentime大会上表示：“我们将统一面向消费者的技术架构。”

卡迪纳尔表示，“好莱坞要想进入下一个阶段，并与硅谷的北方公司公平竞争，唯一的办法就是把自己变成一家科技公司。”

但在一个习惯于发行电影而不是软件更新的行业里，这说起来容易做起来难。

此外，天空之舞将如此多的工作室和平台整合到同一家公司旗下，也面临着巨大的质疑。合并反对者认为，这笔交易将限制众多故事讲述者的机会。

“垄断对任何行业有什么好处呢？它们会扼杀竞争，扼杀创新，限制增长，”纽约大学蒂什艺术学院教授、新线电影公司前高管珍妮特·格里洛说道。

Patrick T. Fallon/法新社/盖蒂图片社

天空之舞正在硅谷彻底重塑的媒体环境中争夺关注度。

YouTube是美国电视上观看次数最多的服务，它不断通过个性化信息流和动态视频缩略图等功能来提升创作者和观众的体验。对许多人来说，YouTube就是电视。

今年票房大卖的一些影片并非来自大型电影公司，而是来自那些在 YouTube 上起步并在网上推广自己电影的年轻电影制作人。

更不用说观众花在观看TikTok制作的两分钟“微剧”上的时间越来越多了。（拉里·埃里森在促成TikTok在美国继续运营的交易中发挥了关键作用，甲骨文公司持有该公司的股份。甲骨文公司还负责存储美国用户的TikTok数据。）

与此同时，人工智能正在创造新的方法来完成从编辑内容到塑造整个角色等各种工作——但同时也有可能减少人类的工作岗位。

埃里森今年早些时候告诉CNBC：“我不认为人工智能会取代人类的创造力。我真的认为它能倍增电影制作人以及其他创意人士的创造力，使他们能够更充分地实现自己的愿景，而且我认为它将成为这个行业极其强大的工具。”

对于像Skydance这样拥有数十年知识产权的公司来说，人工智能尤其重要。它能带来新的授权机会，并有可能构建起一条克雷兹在担任美泰CEO期间非常熟悉的收入来源。去年，迪士尼曾尝试与OpenAI的Sora AI视频应用合作，为其动画角色开发一种新的授权模式，但该应用在几个月后便关闭了。

为了实现他的雄心壮志，埃里森从硅谷聘请了几位关键人才。

去年，他聘请了谷歌和Meta的前高管戴恩·格拉斯哥(Dane Glasgow)担任派拉蒙首席产品官。今年5月，格拉斯哥又招募了通用汽车前首席人工智能官巴拉克·图罗夫斯基(Barak Turovsky)担任消费者人工智能负责人。图罗夫斯基此前在谷歌工作了十多年，负责将人工智能应用于谷歌的一些核心产品，包括搜索和广告。

今年8月，派拉蒙影业聘请了尼克·李（Nick Lee）和苏珊娜·佩利坎（Suzanne Pellican）。李曾在微软从事人工智能工作四年，此前在谷歌工作了16年；佩利坎此前在谷歌工作了八年，期间利用人工智能改进了谷歌的广告产品。就在上周，派拉蒙又宣布了两位人工智能高管的任命。

“利用人工智能改变用户发现和享受观看内容的方式，存在着巨大的机遇，”其中一位新员工 Nikhil Mehta 在 LinkedIn 上发帖称。

此次合并也标志着代际更迭，因为大卫·埃里森比他的许多同行年轻几十岁。他的年轻或许能转化为一种技术上的娴熟程度，从而使Skydance脱颖而出，但也未必如此。

例如，去年秋天，埃里森批准了一部根据“使命召唤”电子游戏系列改编的真人电影，部分原因是他本人就是该系列的终身粉丝。

但像派拉蒙和华纳这样的传统媒体公司，距离真正自主开发出下一部《使命召唤》还有很长的路要走。

Skydance 的成立是许多人长久以来梦想的实现——但要取得长期的成功，它需要超越好莱坞帝国的范畴。

正如埃里森去年接管派拉蒙影业时所说：“除非你能打造出一款真正能与硅谷的产品相媲美的技术产品，否则你就无法参与竞争。”