The Indicator from Planet Money - Why Paramount went looney tunes for Warner Bros.

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

Paramount Skydance is making a $110 billion play for Warner Bros. Discovery, and with it intellectual property like Harry Potter, Batman, and subsidiaries HBO and CNN. On today’s show, who is the man behind the deal? Does he really want to make movies? Will any regulators try to stop it? FYI, we are going on a book tour! Planet Money’s first ever book comes out in April. We’ll be celebrating in about a dozen cities. There’s a limited edition tote bag included with your ticket, while supplies last. Details, dates and how to get your ticket at planetmoneybook.com.Related: The Warner Bros. curse (newsletter) Coyote vs. Warner Bros. For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Fact-checking by Sierra Juarez. Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.  See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

NPR. It is a high-stakes, enemies-to-lovers story with enough political and corporate intrigue to satisfy the most discerning of drama fans. And it's not over yet. We are, of course, talking about Paramount Skydances proposed $110 billion takeover of Warner Brothers' discovery. There was a time in this saga when it looked like Netflix would emerge victorious. Warner Brothers kept rebuffing Paramount's offers, and then, Then, last week, Netflix was out. Warner Brothers accepted Paramount's bid.

This is the indicator for Planet Money. I'm Adrienne Ma. And I'm Waylon Wong. If the deal goes through, two legendary Hollywood studios would merge. CNN would be in the hands of Paramount CEO David Ellison, the son of a tech billionaire and an ally of President Donald Trump. And the HBO Mac streaming service would probably get renamed again. So today on the show, we break down the basics of this Hollywood corporate

marriage. Who is David Ellison? What does he want? And how might this deal reshape our polarized media landscape? Plus, we learn about a unique maneuver that Paramount is using to try and gain speedy government approval in the U.S. Today, we are bringing on a marquee name to help walk us through the Paramount Warner Brothers deal. I'm Dave Fulkinflick. I cover the media for NPR. Hi, Dave. You're having a very busy few weeks here. Why, anything come up? I don't know. Why are we here? Dave has been busy writing about another David, David Ellison, chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance. Can you give us the TV Guide capsule summary of what we need to know about Mr. David Ellison? Sure, and TV Guide's not a bad place to go for it because he's somebody who's fascinated with all things Hollywood.

David Ellison is the son of Larry Ellison, one of the richest people to walk on the planet. Larry Ellison was the co-founder of the Software Titan Oracle, which provides me. much of the digital backbone for the nation's commerce and government. David Ellison, as a young man, wanted to become an actor. It didn't pan out. And he started being interested in developing movies and over time with his ambition, but also definitely with his father's extraordinary, immense wealth, he was able ultimately to become a producer. And he helped being one of the lead producers of the Mission Impossible franchise and Top Gun. And he put himself in place just a year ago, with his father's financial backing to take over Paramount,

which was best known as the parent company of CBS, Paramount Studios, Paramount Plus, and also cable channels like Comedy Central and Nickelodeon. What was his most famous IMDB acting credit before he got involved in the production? Oh, I knew you're going to ask me this. He had a minor role in a sort of fighter pilot movie. I'm trying to remember what it was called, but it was not to be. I don't think there were casting directors who looked at and said, that's the guy I won in my film.

That fighter pilot movie, by the way, is a World War I film called Fly Boys. It came out in 2006. David Ellison pops up briefly in the trailer, providing some comic relief as an American soldier. The Germans are moving to our world character. Cassidy will be your squadron leader. Any questions?

Will we be back by lunch? And if that movie sounds like an old-fashioned Hollywood project, well, Dave says David Ellis, Allison has somewhat old-fashioned ambitions. I think it is a sort of mindset and a passion and a belief set, and I can be a great leading figure of Hollywood. The goal here is scale, to be a huge player. Warner Brothers currently has five times the market value of Paramount. So acquiring Warner expands David Ellison's dominion to include not just a mega movie studio, but also cable networks and other properties.

And he needed his father, Larry Ellison's money, to get him. there. Larry Ellison came forward and said, look, and I'm going to put extra, you know, tens of billions of dollars backed up by my personal trust so that you know that this money is there. There still are foreign investors, including a sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, including an emirate investment fund. And these have complicated questions that attach to them as well. Let's not forget also that Larry Ellison is sort of a lead investor in TikTok US. David Ellison will in a very short amount of time, have gone from his little boutique studio to potentially, if regulators approve this, Skydance, Paramount, and Warner together. But also, layered over that, although it's separately

held, are Ellison's other major stakes in the software giant of Oracle and in the social media giant of TikTok. And these are not incidental interests. These are all about data and consumer habits online. Dave tells us there's also an ideological component to this deal. Warner Brothers owns CNN, a network that President Trump has repeatedly attacked. The Ellison's father and son, particularly Larry Ellison, the father, is an advisor and a friend of President Trump. Trump has made clear any number of times how much he loathes CNN. The Ellison's need the Trump administration not to intercede in court and try to block this takeover, Warner Brothers discovery, and they are allied with him, or at least are for the time

being. And so that's the fear you're also hearing within CNN. They're fearful what's ahead. They believe there'll be job cuts, and they think they could be targeted if they were to be named publicly. There could be job cuts in other parts of the new megacorporation, too, if regulators approve the deal. And Paramount took an unusual step in trying to get the green light from antitrust authorities. That's according to Matt Stoller. He's research director at the American Economic Liberties Project. It's a nonprofit that opposes corporate monopolies. And here's how Matt describes antitrust law in the U.S.

If you're looking at a company and you're saying those companies are too powerful, you're basically right. And then it's about figuring out the relevant nerds to explain to an out-of-touch judge why that's true. The antitrust approval process has lots of nerdy details. And one of them is something called the Hart Scott Rodino process. It's where companies involved in large mergers submit information to the government even before a deal is finalized. You have to tell the government if, hey, we want to merge and you have to give the government. government a bunch of information. And then the government has 30 days to look at that information. And if they want more, they can ask you for more in what's called the second request.

Matt says compiling all the documentation for this second request can take between 12 and 18 months. Then the government has 30 days to review the new information and decide whether to bring an antitrust case or let the merger happen. Paramount did something that is astonishing, or at least what I was told from experienced lawyers, is astonishing, which is that they completed the second request before they even won the bid for Warner. Paramount said it had, quote, substantially complied with the second request back on February 9th. That's almost a month ago.

It means that it already sent over extensive documentation to the Justice Department, paperwork that Matt says can take over a year to pull together. At least to me, it indicates that they feel very confident that the Trump administration is not going to challenge this merger no matter what they find. And they want to close it really quickly so that the other potential entities that might challenge it, which is to say state-level enforcers who are Democrats can't bring a challenge in time to stop the closing. It's a very savvy political move. It's very insidery. It's kind of nerd stuff. But it does matter. And in fact, some politicians are already speaking up. The Democratic Attorney General in California, which is, of course, home to

Hollywood, said last week that his department has an open investigation of the deal. Democratic lawmakers like Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Chris Murphy of Connecticut have also expressed grievances. The deal also needs approval from European regulators and Warner Brothers shareholders. On Monday, Paramount said it expects that vote to happen in the spring, with the deal closing by the end of September. This episode was produced by Julia Ritchie with engineering by Robert Rodriguez. It was fact-checked by Sierra Hwadis. Kicking Cannon as our show's editor and The Indicators of Production of NPR. Will we be back by lunch?