Paramount closes the $110 billion Warner deal and lists the combined company as Skydance

Paramount said on Tuesday, 6 October 2026, that it had completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The combined company is called Skydance. David Ellison controls it. Class B shares were due to start trading the same day on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SKYD. Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery shares stopped trading on the Nasdaq.

The price on the deal, as stated by the company and reported by TechCrunch and Deadline, is $110 billion. Deadline, in its account of the closing, put the debt the new company starts with at some $80 billion. TechCrunch reported the company's own figure for annual revenue at nearly $70 billion. Those two numbers are the ones that will decide whether the closing is a studio story or a balance-sheet story. A firm with $70 billion of revenue and about $80 billion of debt has little room to miss a year of streaming cash.

The assets now under one roof are the ones the bidding war was about. Paramount+ and HBO Max sit in the same company. So do CBS, CNN, MTV, TBS, Comedy Central and Food Network. The film and television library includes The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, the DC characters and Yellowstone. Deadline noted that the closing ends a year of argument over two century-old studios, their television lots, and the networks.

The path to Tuesday ran through a lost bidder. Paramount said in February that it would buy Warner Bros. Discovery after a contest with Netflix. Netflix had earlier reached an agreement to buy the film and television studios and the streaming business, and to leave the cable networks out. That structure would have split the company. The deal that closed does not. Cable, news and the streamers move together.

The last legal blocks moved in the weeks before the closing. TechCrunch reported that settlements with a group of American states and with a Hollywood writers' union cleared the main hurdles. The states had treated the combination as a competition case. The union had treated it as a labour case, with the usual questions about writer staffing on a smaller number of buyers. Neither settlement text was the story on Tuesday. The closing statement was.

Ellison's line in that statement was direct. "Today is a historic day, not just for Skydance but for our entire industry," he said. He said the aim had been to put the two studios together and make a stronger competitor, "with the talent, resources, and reach to tell great stories in every genre, on every platform." He thanked employees, creative talent, production teams, advisers and partners, and said the focus now turns to the future. Deadline's accompanying piece quoted Ellison and Ynon Kreiz on staff and on priorities, and used Kreiz's line that getting to the closing had been quite a journey.

The journey is the part a reader can already price. Skydance was the smaller bidder that ended up with the larger library, after Netflix had the first agreement and then did not have the company. Ellison's father, Larry Ellison, is the Oracle founder whose fortune sat behind the bid. The closing note does not itemise that support. It does put the son in charge of HBO, CNN, CBS and the Warner lot on the same morning.

What changes for a viewer on Wednesday is almost nothing. The apps do not merge because a share stops trading. What changes for a writer, a newsroom and a lender is the name on the debt and the number of buyers in the market. CNN and CBS News now report to the same owner. HBO and Paramount+ now renew shows against one budget. The $80 billion figure Deadline used is the constraint on that budget. If the company has to spend the first year paying for the deal, the library is an asset that can be sold, licensed, or left on a shelf. Ellison said the ambition is now a reality. The debt number is the reality the ambition has to clear.