Today, Explained - One nepo baby to rule them all

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

David Ellison’s daddy won him Warner Brothers. The rest of us are probably losing. This episode was produced by Kelli Wessinger and Avishay Artsy, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Andrea Lopez-Cruzado, engineered by Patrick Boyd and David Tatasciore, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison. Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All right, what's the craziest thing your daddy ever by you? For David Allison, son of Orah Clary, the answer would be Warner Brothers. Not the actual brothers. Larry Ellison bought his best boy, David, the studio. Larry had already bought David Paramount the studio, and Paramount the studio just beat Netflix out in a long, drawn-out saga to acquire... The WB... The debt-ridden studio that owns Batman, bugs, Harry, Carrie, Mad Max, The Matrix, Tony, Tyrion, all six friends, the Lego Cinematic Universe, and the Lisan Al-Gai.

Listen to K. Oh, and CNN, you just bought Wolf Blitzer. Blitzer. The biggest night in Hollywood is around the corner, but we're going to talk about the biggest deal in Hollywood and why it's probably going to be bad for you on Today Explained. At Desjardin, we speak business. speak equipment modernization. We're fluent in data digitization and expansion into foreign markets, and we can talk all day about streamlining manufacturing processes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do. Business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk, business.

Last week, Apple announced its cheapest laptop ever, and the wildest thing about it is it's really kind of very good. This week on the Vergecast, we're talking all about how Apple managed to make the MacBook Neo as good and cheap as it is, and whether the rest of the PC market needs to be in just a full-blown panic about it. All that, plus the latest on what's going on with Live Nation and Ticketmaster, what's going on with the Anthropic and the Department of War, and the future of Xbox. On the Vergecast, wherever you get podcasts. Ellison's.

Today explained. Joe Adalian is the West Coast editor for Vulture, where his piece on the mega deal between Paramount and Warner Brothers was titled, Paramount wins, everybody loses. I think the Ellison's sort of win for this in the short term, but even then, I do think you can break down the whole sort of idea that in the end, everybody could lose because people who are at Warner Brothers now are going to go through, yet another merger, the third in about a decade.

We are going to move now to this breaking news from Washington. A federal judge there has approved without any conditions the $85 billion merger of AT&T and Time Warner. Meanwhile, AT&T just announced a multi-billion dollar deal that combines its media unit, which is WarnerMedia, with Discovery Communications. Which means another round of layoffs, another round of divisions getting consolidated into other divisions. it means what was already a lean operation there, as so many places in Hollywood are now much leaner than they were 10 years ago, gets even leaner. We are continuing to monitor some of those layoffs coming out of Warner Brothers' discovery.

Paramount Skydance is laying off more than 1,000 employees as the entertainment industry continues to struggle. It means that for the next year, year and a half or so, rather than just focusing on making shows, people are going to be distracted about new bosses, new ways of doing things. colleagues going away, new colleagues coming in to take their place or to do their jobs. So Warner Brothers sort of loses. So employees at Warner Brothers right out the gate looking straight down the barrel of layoffs. Right.

People who are creative, people who write and produce and direct TV shows and movies will be losers too because there's one less independent voice deciding whether their project can get made. You know, you can't have a bidding war now against Warner Brothers and Paramount for the same project. Paramount Plus and HBO Max, for the most part, don't actually compete right now for shows, but it means that for big movies, you know, there is less of a battle that could go on. And even though Ellison has said that he will continue to do a full robust supply of big feature films for both studios, as many as 30 a year, almost nobody believes them.

and even if they make that same number of movies, they're going to pay talent a lot less because they can, right? There's less competition. So that means big things might not get made. Or if they do get made, people will make a lot less money of it. So from that sense, consolidation is bad. When people think of Warner Brothers, they probably think about movies.

They probably think about Batman. I'm Batman. They probably think of sinners. These don't hate. They're vampires. And one battle after another from last year. I've had a few. A few what?

Bees small beers. Why is it, despite Ellison's promises here, you say that we won't be getting as many movies as we previously did? Because they simply don't need to fill the pipeline as much as they did. They don't need to compete as much. Right now, you know, the studios compete against each other for every weekend and they want to have the movie that's going to win. And that doesn't mean that you can't have Disney sometimes. We'll have two movies in the marketplace. It does happen.

But it means that you don't, you know, you're not going to take as much risks because you're not, you're, you're not going to want to cannibalize your bigger picture, your bigger project. So it just, it, it, and you can only movie making, you only need so much to fill your pipeline too because, you know, one of the reasons to do is make movies is to, to, to fill their television pipelines. So Warner Brothers now is making movies with the eye on what's going to play on HBO Max and what they can sell in the secondary market. Paramount for Paramount Plus, when you have one consolidated platform, you probably don't need as many movies. And had this deal gone to Netflix, by the way, there also would have been fewer movies. Not for the reason that everyone thinks because of Netflix doesn't want to do movies. I think Netflix would have gotten into the theatrical business. I really do. But they probably would have made fewer Netflix original movies that were really expensive. A movie like The Rip, for example. A movie like The Rip, for example. with Affleck and Damon. Hey, what's in this attic, Desi? What's up there? Don't know. I've never been. I already told you, I don't have any drugs.

Dog doesn't alert for drugs. Alerts for money. You know, do you really need to spend $200 million to get that sort of blockbuster feel? If Warner Brothers is already doing that kind of movie and you can monetize it in theaters, you maybe don't need to do you can make your

Netflix original films more like the kissing booth. Truth be told, I've never kissed anyone before. Something that costs 20 or 30 million and still as a big audience or K-pop demon hunters. An acquisition that becomes the biggest movie Netflix has ever had. It's funny how a conversation about the movies

invariably leads to conversations about streaming because, of course, so many people are experiencing movies through their streaming services. People directly associate Warner Brothers with HBO. What's going to happen to what used to be, like, the marquee premium cable service, HBO? Is it going to have a name change again, Joe? Well, look, in fairness, and I've covered this before, HBO has always been HBO and is still HBO and never changed, right?

But the bigger point is, does HBO survive is that I feel confident in saying some form of HBO as we've known it will. The HBO that has a team that does shows like The White Lotus. Piper, no! Which I know you love, Sean. Who told you that? A little birdie. I just guessed. I'm more sad about Chris Fleming, like live at the palace.

I recently. I recently disgraced myself in front of Lynn Manuel Miranda. This new company needs a premium brand, and they're going to get the godfather of all premium brands, no pun intended, with HBO. And if HBO can survive the barbarians at the gate of AT&T and David Zaslaw from Discovery Networks, I think they can probably survive Paramount. David Ellison actually does like movies. Okay, so don't worry so much about your HBO, but what about if you love CNN? Should you be worried that CNN's about to get CBSed, if you know what I mean. CBS News, America's newest place to CBS News. Yeah.

I mean, well, look, if you love CNN as it is, you probably like really mainstream centrist news. I'm just going to say it. Because it's certainly over the last couple years under David Zazlov, who is also in his own way and with his own masters sort of tried to, his corporate masters has tried to make CNN more middle the road and a little more MAGA-friendly. Democrats, they are for things. illegal aliens.

You're for boys and girls' sports. I do think there's some reason for concern, yes, at least in the short term. You know, there have been reports, credible reports, that people close to Paramount have assured the White House that we are going to change up CNN and make it better for you. How much of that is simply, you know, the messaging that now has to go on with so many of these big companies. You know, once the deal closes, they're less beholden to the government because, you know, at least on the CNN side because CNN is cable and the FCC doesn't directly control cable. The real worry is who runs this combined, almost certain to be combined news operation of CBS and CNN. If it's Barry Weiss, the woman who is now in charge of CBS News, then yeah, there's probably reason for some people to be afraid of CNN going the way of CBS News and tilting further rightward, not just centrist, but center right.

Mark R. Rubio, we salute you. You're the ultimate Florida man. Okay, so to review here, we've got a lot of losers. Potentially all of us because we're getting less stuff. Well, right. But surely there are some winners here, right? Because a bunch of people just made a ton of money. Well, you know, let's talk about the consumer part of it. In the short term, though, there are some wins for consumers because, let's face it, people are frustrated as it is now of trying to find the shows they want across multiple platforms

and keeping track of too much TV and what's it on and when if you get the consolidation where by themselves Paramount Plus and HBO Max are sort of second rate services but if what Ellison wants to do works if he thinks that by getting this sort of big scale he can more effectively compete at the level of Netflix at the level of Disney plus Hulu. There is some win for consumer in that, you know, you will be able to more easily access the shows you want. You might be able to get track, keep track of them. And maybe in the short term, you might even pay a little bit less depending upon what you already subscribe to. Other winners, you know, in the short term, oddly enough, Netflix, you know, even though

Netflix lost this deal, in a way, they've won because as part of losing the deal, David Ellison has to pay Netflix, has paid Netflix almost $3 billion, sort of as a consolation prize. And they've also gotten a look inside Warner Brothers books. They've sort of gotten a better sense of how Warner Brothers businesses work. It's certainly an ego loss for them. But in terms of long term, investors like the fact that they didn't get burdened by future debt and this big company. And, you know, they can sort of also be there if the merger fails in five years. maybe they pick up Warner Brothers for cheaper.

Okay, with all that said, Joe, with the winners, with the losers, it feels like this is a done deal, but it isn't, right? No, it's not. I mean, you know, it's doubtful the Trump administration is going to throw up many roadblocks of this, unless they think of some new ways to sort of extort something out of the Ellison family, you know, but they're pretty close. But there are scenarios where the California Attorney General and others attorneys general, team up and file lawsuit against this, which they would possibly lose, maybe win. But even if they lose, they could call for some changes to the deal or some guarantees. We don't know. So, again, likely to close. Yes.

Guaranteed, not at all. If this deal goes through, David Ellison becomes the king of the Nepo Babies. Who is the man that might be in charge of what feels like half of our American media? when today explained is back. Support for the show comes from Quince. A Thoughtful Wardrobe starts with Quality Over Quantity. Is your wardrobe thoughtful? I like to think mine is.

Quince can help. Quince makes high-quality wardrobe staples using premium fabrics like 100% European linen. Sorry 99% European linen. Also, they do 100% silk, sorry 99-9-silk. And organic cotton poplin. They say that by working directly with top, factories, they can cut out the cost of the middle bed, which means you won't pay for a brand

markup, just quality clothing. Guess what? Our colleague, Nisha Chital, has tried Quince. I got the organic cotton boyfriend crewneck sweater. The cotton sweater is, you know, just kind of a big oversized sweater that you can put it on and it feels effortlessly put together. It's really easy to build an outfit with it. And I got that in a cream color that I'm excited about. Right now go to quince.com slash explain for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's a full year to build your wardrobe and love it. And you will. Now available in Canada too.

Canada. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to QINCE.com slash explain for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quins.com slash explained. One plus one equals more of the greatest stories. Hulu on Disney Plus. Stories about survivors. The most dangerous planet.

Family. Retribution. Murder. Prophecy. Beer and propane. The ultimate soldier. Chicago, all right. The best of the best stories now with even more from Hulu.

Amazing. Have it all with B1 Disney Plus. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $24.50 an hour. Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields like software development and information technology. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. We come to this place. Today, explained.

My name is Reeves Weideman, and I'm a features writer at New York Meg. Great, and lately you've been writing features about one individual. Is it fair to say said individual is like maybe the biggest nepo baby on earth at the moment, at least? Well, the only credit I'll give David Ellison in the scheme of Nepo Babies is he did go into a completely different industry than his dad. He took his dad's money, maybe more money than any Nepo Baby has taken tens of billions of dollars at this point of tech money and is now pouring it into Hollywood. He talks about how as a kid he loved the movies, like many kids do. He went to the movies with his mom every weekend, did sort of movie marathons. And he actually went to college for business, but quickly figured out that was actually not what he wanted to do.

He wanted to go to film school. Went to film school at USC. And initially he was trying to kind of do any and everything. He was interested in acting, interested in writing, directing maybe. and his first foray into Hollywood was acting in a movie, a World War I movie starring James Franco. Where are we going? I don't know. Let's just fly around a little. Have some fun.

And the way that David Ellison got this role was his dad's money. And basically, to put it bluntly, I mean, David had gotten a connection to these people making this movie. Larry had contributed a lot of the money for the budget. and lo and behold, David got a role in the film. And so I don't think moguldom was necessarily in the cards at the very beginning, but from his earliest days, David did want to be in Hollywood in some way. How was his big debut in Fly Boys? Was it well received?

It was not great. This is a veritable roll call of war movie clichés. He's not a natural actor. He's not a naturally charismatic person, which I think has sort of carried over into. his business life a little bit. So I think thankfully for him, he realized pretty early on the acting thing was not exactly going to take, and he was going to have to figure out some other way to make it in the business. And so he becomes a money man. Basically, he sort of got this notion that many people get when they get into Hollywood, especially when they have a little

bit of money behind them, is I'm going to start a production company. And he actually initially went around, tried to sort of find some investors to pour some money into the company that would make various movies primarily sort of focused on the kinds of movies David liked, which were sort of action adventure movies. Movies with planes, apparently. Movies with planes was kind of, there has been a running joke that David, who was a pilot himself when he was younger, sort of a stunt pilot doing like 360 barrel rolls, those kinds of things, that if you put a plane in a movie, that David was going to be into it, explosions, those kinds of things. Ultimately, he got basically all of the money for the company

came from his dad. And the company is Skydance. Company's called Skydance. And what they were able to do very early on is they got a deal with Paramount. And Paramount at the time was kind of a struggling movie studio. It's one of the legendary movie studios in Hollywood. But at the time, it was sort of being mismanaged and not that successful. And they were happy to have David come in with some money to help them finance and make some movies. And in exchange for doing that, David was allowed to participate in, as they put it in Hollywood, some of the big franchises that Paramount has. What's done is done.

What we say it's done. You don't just protect the bay. You are the bay. My name is Khan. And some of those movies were great big blockbusters. A lot of them, David, you know, didn't have a ton to do with. And then eventually he eventually started kind of trying to make movies on his own. Some of them were based on kind of original ideas that he and others had.

And then he also had this longstanding goal of making a Terminator movie. Terminator and Terminator 2 were two of the movies he loved as a kid. If he were the parents are dead. And he made a version of the movie Terminator Genesis. I've been waiting for you. Also not great. And so he had this kind of mixed track record of making these big, action movies. Generally, the ones with Tom Cruise were pretty good.

What are you waiting for? I'm jumping out of window! Generally, the ones without Tom Cruise, based on kind of original ideas, not so good. And then he makes a really good movie with Tom Cruise. In arguably, sort of one of the best, maybe the best critical and commercial film of, you know, the last few decades, Top Gun Maverick. Come on, get, you can do it. Don't think. Just do it. Does that change how Hollywood sees him? Does he become less of a nepo baby, Sion, and more of a legitimate player?

I think it was really good timing because that movie came out, did incredibly well. Everyone in Hollywood loved it. Tom Cruise is here to save the movies. David Ellison is, you know, the one who's supporting him. Maybe he's not so bad. And right at that moment was when David had started his pursuit of Paramount. it became public at the end of 2023, that he was interested in buying it.

The Redstone family was going to sell the company. And so there was this real moment where, you know, Hollywood, like many industries, but maybe Hollywood in particular is going through this real period of disruption. Spending was down, money was down. COVID sort of changed the movie business in particular. And so I think there was this feeling, at least, at that moment, that, you know, if not the savior of Hollywood, that David was maybe the best possible person you could have to take over a studio like Paramount. I think where the opinion of him started to change was in the year between 2024 into 2025, between when the deal was announced and when it actually went through, a lot of things happened during that point.

And the biggest was that Donald Trump was elected president. And Paramount is not just a movie studio. Paramount owns CBS, most notably. And people will, I'm sure, remember all of the drama that surrounded 60 Minutes and Trump's lawsuit against 60 Minutes. And David's spent, you know, a good portion of that year, basically catering to the Trump administration's needs and wants and desires in order to get this deal approved. So David, who had up to that point barely been involved in politics at all, he was not someone who was even really a big donor. to politicians prior to 2024, you know, really became tied to the Trump administration in ways that made people uncomfortable in all kinds of ways. Then once he took over the studio, and particularly once he started to pursue Warner Brothers, I think people also started to take a closer look at his

record at making movies and start to realize, wait a second, a lot of these movies are not very good. Is this the guy that we actually want running? Not just one. one studio, but potentially two of the biggest studios in Hollywood. And you've done a bunch of interviews you've spoken with anonymous Hollywood executives. It sounds like, are they feeling more hopeful in a moment like this where there's been a bunch of consolidation but also a ton of money infused into the industry? Or are they terrified that this is all going to implode? I did not get any inklings of hope, I don't think. And some of that, unfortunately. You know,

I think there's a certain realism that people have. You know, consolidation was going to happen, which we all know the history of that in any business is just things tend to get smaller. Combined with the politics, the fact that David has has catered so much to the Trump administration and whether that's going to continue. And then thirdly, you. yeah, his taste and his abilities as an executive. Like, he is now, as one Hollywood person pointed out to me, you know, he kind of went from being a midshipman to being the captain of the Titanic, literally, because he now owns the movie Titanic, which was a Paramount movie. There's a lot of people kind of talking about, and I heard about this from some big name filmmakers, directors, producers,

who are just kind of like, you know what? Life is short. I don't want to deal with this guy. I don't want to deal with this guy. I don't want to deal with Paramount. They're in bed with the Trump administration. That is just not what I want to be involved with. We'll see what happens when Paramount and or Warner Brothers offers them more money than Netflix does for their next movie. Will people's sort of, you know, morals stand up to that because I think that at the end of the day, everyone in this business is in it to make movies, TV shows, and to make money. And David Ellison has a lot of money. And he's He is going to be making a lot of the movies and TV shows that we get to watch. Reeves Whiteman wrote the two definitive profiling pieces about David Ellison.

They're called One Nepo to Rule Them All and the Son King of Hollywood. And you can find them both along with the writings of our guy Joe from earlier in the show at vulture.com. And the Academy Award for Achievement and Casting goes to Today Explained. Oh my gosh. Gotta thank Kelly Wessinger and Avi Shai Arzzi, who made today's show. Amina Al-Sari, Andrea Lopez, Cusalo, David Tadishore, and Patrick Boyd, who helped.

Who else? Oh, the clock is coming down. Jolie Myers, Miles Bryan, Haudi, Mooggi, Peter Balamon-Rosen, Daniel Hewitt, Ariana Spuru, Dustin DeSoto, Estead Herndon. No, I'm not, don't play me off. No, I'm not going to stop. Miranda Kennedy and Newell King,

who makes all this possible. Breakmaster, the Bops. I'm Sean Ramos from. Today explains distributed by WNIZ, the show, the part of the Vox Media Podcast Network for more Oscar-winning podcasts. Go to podcast.com.

You can listen ad-free by going to Vox.com slash members. Thanks, Mom. Blitzer.