LOS ANGELES — The mega-merger stitching Paramount to Warner Bros. Discovery finally has a corporate name: Skydance, chairman and CEO David Ellison announced Friday as the Oct. 6 close approaches.
Ellison is recycling the moniker of his original Skydance Media shop rather than inventing a “ParaBros”-style mashup. The combined company plans to shift Class B shares from Nasdaq to the New York Stock Exchange and change its ticker from PSKY to SKYD while amending its charter to Skydance Corporation.
The $111 billion combination folds together major film studios, HBO Max and Paramount+, and a cable portfolio that includes CBS, CNN, MTV, TBS and more. Franchises in the stack run from Harry Potter and the DC Universe to “Yellowstone,” “Mission: Impossible” and Nickelodeon. Ellison will share the top suite with incoming co-CEO Ynon Kreiz, the former Mattel chief, starting Oct. 5.
On X, Ellison framed the brand as a holding identity that keeps Paramount and Warner Bros. “in the spotlight” instead of burying them under a new studio name. Behind the branding sit heavier numbers: projected debt north of $80 billion, large Middle Eastern sovereign stakes, and a Larry Ellison–backed equity guarantee that helped beat out Netflix’s earlier Warner bid and settle a multi-state antitrust fight.
For audiences, the near-term change is a logo and a ticker more than a sudden catalog purge. For Hollywood dealmakers, Skydance Corp. is the new gravity well — and Arizona viewers who live on Paramount+ or Max will be watching whether the “creative-first” pitch survives the debt load.