Intro for February 27, 2026

Dear Gossips,

Today in Please Leave Us Alone news, David Ellison, CEO of Paramount Skydance, won a kiss from daddy after all as his hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery actually worked. After raising the offer for WBD last week, Netflix declined to counter with their own increased bid, so the merger stakes are all but over: the marriage of these two Frankenstein business entities will now begin.

Every time I write about this, I get several—if not many—emails asking why I support this merger so let me just repeat myself: I DON’T. I’m just a cynical bitch who doesn’t think anyone has the political will to stop it on anti-trust/consumer protection grounds, so Paramount will be allowed to swallow Warner Brothers, thus reducing the number of major movie studios from five to four. When I started writing for LaineyGossip, there were seven. In my time recording goings-on in the film industry, we’ve lost three studios. Cool cool cool.

Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said in a statement that the merger is “no longer financially attractive”, adding “we’ve always been disciplined” and that Warners was “‘nice to have’ at the right price, not a ‘must have’ at any price”. This is a level of managerial responsibility we’re definitely not seeing from David Ellison and Paramount, which is not heaping praise on Netflix, more just noting that Netflix probably would have provided a modicum of better stewardship over Warners than we’re about to see from Ellison, who is buying up Hollywood like he’s trying to buy his way to popularity. This feels very like Elon Musk buying Twitter so he could force people to like his tweets.

Paramount is now on the hook to pay Netflix’s $2.8 billion break-up fee on behalf of Warners, and Netflix’s stock rose by over 10% on the news they will not be acquiring WBD. So, not merging has been good for Netflix’s business (the stock market is fake and a scam, argue with a wall). But will it be good for Paramount and Warners?

NO! It categorically will not! We are now in the exact same position as the Disney-Fox merger, there’s not even a whisper of a difference in these companies. Netflix could at least pretend Warners would give them a theatrical arm to complement their streaming business, but Paramount and Warners are the same thing. So just like Disney-Fox, we’re in for huge layoffs, coming at a time when the US job market is already in the toilet, and after the recently combined Paramount Skydance entity has already cut over 3,000 jobs.

This will also saddle the merged ParaSky Dance Brothers Discover Warner, or whatever horrible name they come up with, with tens of billions more in debt (estimated around $54 billion), which means even more cost-cutting. You think things were bad under David Zaslav’s WBD reign? A Netflix executive warned about $6 billion in “savings” from layoffs alone if Paramount succeeded in the takeover, never mind what creative projects end up on the chopping block.

But let’s talk about the creative stuff. Paramount Skydance will now gain control of CNN, which means David Ellison can run that news network straight into the ground, just as he has done with CBS News. (Also, their financing comes in no small part from Saudia Arabia, which state-sponsored the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. This is all very normal business stuff!) He also now has control of HBO, and I am very, VERY worried about Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. It is under Ellison, after all, that CBS sacrificed Stephen Colbert on the altar of appeasing Trump, and John Oliver is another thorn in the administration’s side.

He’s also a thorn in the side of “business daddies”, in general. To date, no one has interfered with John Oliver, but also to date…no one was in charge that wanted the heat of being the one to take him off the air. But David Ellison? Insulated by billions, his father a pal of the president? I don’t think he cares. In fact, I am partially convinced this entire farce has been about getting control of CNN and HBO just to further degrade the state of journalism in America.

And then there are shows like Heated Rivalry. Jacob Tierney just confirmed season two will start filming in August, targeting a spring 2027 release. In Canada, HR is safe thanks to Crave, but HBO/Max is the home of HR in the US. Will that continue under Ellison? Or will he boot the hockey gays to the curb in the name of appeasement? After all, the president loves the toxic atmosphere of men’s hockey, and HR is a direct antidote to that toxicity. And what about The Pitt? That show is blatantly, proudly pro-science, pro-expertise, pro-empathy. Will season three introduce an anti-vax influencer as the latest resident?

There was already a talent drain at Warners and HBO through the AT&T and Discovery years, but it wasn’t a complete loss because there were still enough film people around to manage the talent relationships, like Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy, the co-chiefs of the Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group. De Luca and Abdy came in as longtime and respected producers, even if people side-eyed the corporate leadership and disliked David Zaslav, they at least respected De Luca and Abdy enough to work with Warners anyway.

But David Ellison is a different beast entirely and everyone knows it, in no small part because we have seen how he’s exerted his influence over CBS News. I suspect we’re going to see a full-on talent exodus from Warners over the next few years. I know if I was in development at a rival network/studio/streamer, I would be calling around, offering to hear pitches, to finesse exit clauses, to throw out life rafts to anyone who wants to escape a Warner Brothers with David Ellison in charge. (Hilarious if Netflix ends up with Heated Rivalry somehow.)

It really feels like we’re witnessing the slow death of Hollywood, that we’re letting billionaires squeeze the life out of a great American art form. The studio system has collapsed before, but previously that was driven by demands coming from within the industry itself, either by changing technological or labor needs. Now it’s coming from trust fund babies who don’t have enough hobbies to keep them away from the rest of us. Why couldn’t David Ellison get super into yacht racing? Or collecting antique watches? These billionaires are raising boring ass kids and we’re all paying for it.

Live long and gossip,

Sarah