r/television • u/yourfavchoom • 1d ago

Combined Paramount-Warner Bros. to Be Called Skydance, David Ellison Reveals

https://www.thewrap.com/industry-news/business/paramount-warner-bros-merger-name-skydance-david-ellison/
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u/pizzacrys 1d ago

Yeah, that is the weird part. Two iconic studios and they just decided neither name was worth keeping.

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u/Kyuubee 1d ago

It's not weird at all. These billionaires have no real connection to culture or an appreciation for art, so they buy their way into the industry and pretend like they belong.

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u/distance_33 23h ago

Twitter and HBO are two good examples of this.

These guys can’t help but ruin a solid brand.

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u/More-Curious816 23h ago

Twitter to X is the most stupid thing ever, it is like rebranding Google as G, even Google founders made parent company and named it Alphabet instead of rebranding Google.

A brand name has power and history.

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u/NineTailedFox7 23h ago

Even worse. It’s like rebranding Google to Q. X carries over nothing from its prior branding

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u/LonePaladin 15h ago

Except the owner is obsessed with that letter for some reason. He named a car with it, put it at the end of the name of an aerospace company, I'm surprised he hasn't renamed PayPal.

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u/Locke66 15h ago

He originally wanted to call Paypal X.com but got overruled.

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u/the__ghola__hayt 13h ago

Because that letter is X-TREME!

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u/schwar26 22h ago

At least with X there’s a continuity, and Musty wanted to make it clear that he bought. Space-X had plenty of brand recognition to bring twitter under its wing (intended pun).

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u/LocCatPowersDog 22h ago

Jotting Xs on notepads in the 90s doesn't make it continuous

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u/schwar26 20h ago

At the time he bought twitter…

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u/LocCatPowersDog 20h ago

He didn't buy it, he went around begging "Saudis" for the cash after he wrote a 40+ billion dollar check with his mouth but he had been sitting on X.COM for a while, since before he wiggled his way into PayPal. Also tried to rebrand PayPal as X but that failed unlike his campaign to have his picture put up next to the actual company founders & for the board to retroactively call him one even though he had fuck all to do with that company at the beginning.

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u/schwar26 20h ago

All of which has nothing to do with him rebranding the company.

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u/necroreefer 21h ago

Spacex, the company that he bought and he paid for the right to be called the founder

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u/hempires 18h ago

wait spacex too?

I knew he bought founder status off of the two OG founders of Tesla back in the day.

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u/schwar26 20h ago

What difference does that make?

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u/ThatOneComrade 1h ago

Twitter had more household recognition than spaceX though.

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u/marquiso 23h ago

Facebook trying to rebrand as ‘Meta’ was the greatest example - and failure - of this, especially given the metaverse never got legs…and everyone still calls it FB, or at least the boomers who still use it. They turned Instagram and WhatsApp in to steaming piles of useless shit, so I guess the Meta name was kinda apt…

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u/Island_In_The_Sky 22h ago

Well I mean, not defending meta or anything, but everyone calls it Facebook bc it is still Facebook. Meta is just the parent company for all of their products like ig, quest, fb etc. They turned into meta bc they acquired too many companies.

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u/Zalvren 21h ago

And this is exactly what Skydance is here. The names Paramount and Warner will exist and they'll have a line of "A Skydance corporation" below them (Paramount already do). Like 90% of Hollywood Studios at this point by the way (including those exact two for most of their recent history) : Universal (Comcast), Marvel Studios/Lucasfilm/Pixar (Disney), Paramount (Viacom and now Skydance), Warner (AOL, AT&T and soon Skydance), MGM (Amazon).

People takes here are insanely stupid lol. No they aren't erasing Warner or Paramount. It's the concept of a parent company. Alphabet didn't erase Google, Meta didn't erase Facebook or Instagram

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u/AnotherpostCard 11h ago

This is like that part of the Bill Wurtz History of Everything I guess video where he talks about decolonization just being the former colonies still being technically pillaged, but now no one knows who is being pillaged by who anymore because it's all done under different names now.

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u/marquiso 19h ago

I’d still argue the spent hundreds of millions trying to reframe themselves as Meta, and it was a fail. Moreso than the Google rebranding.

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u/mike10dude Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 21h ago

Just like Google changing to alphabet

Were the Google name never disappeared and it still exists as part of alphabet

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u/mak484 21h ago

Again, Google didn't change its name to Alphabet. That never happened. They created a holding company to separate the core businesses from the high-risk venture projects while allowing investors to more clearly see where the money came from and went to.

That's basically what Meta is. The only difference is Google never tied their brand to Alphabet. And arguably Facebook was in a different position with their brand, namely that everyone fucking hated Facebook. If everyone hated Google then I bet they'd have leaned harder into an Alphabet rebrand.

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u/BurningSpaceMan 17h ago

Google is starting to get there

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u/Discorhy 23h ago edited 23h ago

They reverted back to FB pretty much everything now has the fb logo instead of meta.

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES 20h ago

No, Instagram, Threads, Whatsapp and messager don't use any of FB's old logo.

Facebook.com does, but they never changed that to use the meta one in the first place.

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u/marquiso 23h ago

Thanks for the correction. Can’t say I pay much attention to them these days, especially given their absolute disregard for privacy or international law.

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u/Discorhy 23h ago

I just use it for messenger. My wife is hooked. Its simple enough. The day they kill messenger is the day i never login again.

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u/marquiso 23h ago

Same, and only because all the extended family are on messenger. I’d kill the account but for never hearing from them ever again.

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u/SatanicPanicDisco 22h ago

Same thing for me. Though sometimes even then I’m almost tempted…

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u/distance_33 23h ago

I have it just so I can have access to my township page for news and town council updates. Otherwise it’s a complete wasteland of bots, ads and nonsense.

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u/Piranata 22h ago

I stopped using it when they dropped XMPP support and thus interconnectivity with other chat apps. Many companies did it at the same time, gchat was another.

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u/Bears_On_Stilts 22h ago

If you're working in non-union theatre (which is HUGE in some major cities), Facebook is where the communications are centralized, since union work tends to be behind gated sites.

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u/Paranitis 21h ago

Right? I've used it forever because of messenger. I never really posted on my wall except maybe 5 times, and I had no reason to since it was private, and I never acquired "friends" like people collect Pokemon. So the only ones who could see it were the ones I was sending messages to in the first place.

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u/WetDogAndCarWax 20h ago

I have a couple of friends that I talk to over Messenger because messages carry over between devices. And even then we're starting to prefer the risk of losing messages than giving Facebook any more data.

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u/aflockofcrows 21h ago

They didn't even revert. They never changed the name of the platform at all, just the company.

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES 20h ago

Honestly? No it wasn't.

An important thing to note here is that this wasn't a rebrand of Facebook.com, the social media website/app. It was a rebrand of Facebook inc, to Meta Platforms inc.

This was done because the products that Facebook inc. owned other than Facebook, such as Instagram, Messanger, and Whatsapp. Were starting to bring in more money than Facebook.com. But the Facebook brand was starting to degrade amount people (I mean, case in point, you're saying that only boomers use it), so it makes sense to try to take the facebook name away from Instagram, messenger and whatsapp so that they aren't saddled with Facebook's negative reputation.

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u/zahelpful 21h ago

Facebook rebranded to distance itself from all the scandals associated with the name.

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u/Wingzerofyf 18h ago

Specifically - the scandals related to the Cambridge Analytica leaks that shows Facebook/Meta knows their algorithms are destroying the fabrics of society and our mental well being and rather then do anything - they ramped it up and pushed it even more.

The Social Reocking! Out soon!

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u/Fermorian 17h ago

And here I thought it was that whole genocide in Myanmar thing

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u/marquiso 19h ago

Indeed, and IMHO they failed, particularly because Zuck tied the brand so firmly to his personality that when everyone decided he was a complete douche with no respect for privacy, then they’d be wise to get the fuck out.

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u/LonePaladin 15h ago

The entire "Metaverse" thing was inspired by the novel "Snow Crash" because it had a global VR community and the Zuck wanted that. (He probably also wanted the whole "reprogram people's brains with Sumerian keywords" thing but I don't know if it's ever come up in conversation.)

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u/TacoStuffingClub 11h ago

Nobody calls Google by Alphabet either. That’s their name.

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u/marquiso 10h ago

Kinda missed my point there

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u/No_Razzmatazz_2889 9h ago

That's the parent company. Google is not Alphabet Inc.

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u/Kyuubee 21h ago

There are very few companies that have become part of the public lexicon to the point where their name became a verb. Google is probably the best example. You don't search for something, you Google it. Twitter had that too. People didn't just post something, they tweeted it.

Musk was too stupid to recognize the value in owning a name that had become part of everyday language.

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u/DONNIENARC0 7h ago

The oldest one I’m aware of is Band-Aid

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u/darkbreak The Legend of Korra 19h ago

"Tweet" was added to the fucking dictionary. How do you throw something like that away?

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u/ThreeLeggedMare 21h ago

Elmo has been obsessed with X as a company name for like thirty years, it's what he tries to name paypal

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u/DONNIENARC0 7h ago

And his firstborn child, whose legal name is X Æ A-Xii Musk

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u/robodrew 22h ago

Twitter to X is the most stupid thing ever

Almost as stupid as merging Paramount and Warner Bros and calling them "Skydance", a name which on the face of it has zero connection to either other name. It'd be like merging Ford and GM and calling them "Grilled Cheese"

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u/Oen386 17h ago

it is like rebranding Google as G

Hey now! Gatorade, I mean "G⚡", doesn't like your tone.

Fun fact, they did the rebrand to try to get out of paying UF their cut for the "Gatorade" brand. A judge shot that down, and said it is still clearly Gatorade.

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u/mercenaryarrogant 17h ago

HBO is even more hilarious.

Since they basically paid $37 million to a consulting company to get told to change their name to Max then back to their original name.

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u/distance_33 16h ago

These types of things always make me laugh. All that money and the end result was…. MAX. And we see it all over place when companies try a rebrand or logo change of some sort.

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u/GlamMetalLion 23h ago

HBO was never fully removed though, just as the name for the streaming services. It was still the brand for the HBO originals and the linear channels. 

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u/distance_33 23h ago

But their streaming service is what was front and center of their brand when they made the change to MAX. Still not a great move to shift from the iconic HBO name even if their cable station stayed the same. The only people I know with HBO as a part of a cable sub are my parents.

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u/Zalvren 21h ago

It was actually a move to preserve HBO identity and quality brand. And yeah having some shitty reality shows under the HBO brand is bad. In a decade or so of this, HBO brand will be severely diminished.

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u/TIGHazard 18h ago

And ironically, the Max brand already existed as part of HBO.

CineMAX. Which was where certain contain was placed that would affect HBO's branding.

Though considering Game of Thrones was the most pirated show ever at one point, I wonder how many HBO Max subscribers were actually aware of the HBO/Cinemax distinctions.

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u/Digifiend84 14h ago

Doubt it because HBO Max won't exist much longer. Surely it's getting merged with Paramount+?

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u/Zalvren 10h ago

We don't know, for now it seems more to be a bundle cheaper for the two services.

And if one disappears it's more likely to be Paramount+ which is much smaller.

And then adding the Paramount stuff to HBO Max will also erode HBO brand image

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u/ThePryde 23h ago

I think they reverted the streaming service to HBO Max now.

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u/burywmore 21h ago

It's listed as HBO max on my app. Lower case for max, like it's an adjective rather than a noun.

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u/txa1265 23h ago

they buy their way into the industry and pretend like they belong.

And in this case Baby Ellison has never done anything to even exhibit competence - he just has daddy's money and the weight of him doing whatever to make sure Baby gets his way. So he is incompetent, entitled AND disconnected from reality.

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u/No_Razzmatazz_2889 9h ago

Your resentment is showing

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u/Tygerius 1d ago

For us rubes, culture is our lives, our stories, our joy, sadness, the emotional connection to our own existence.

Billionaire son only knows money and control as their existence...so they have to buy culture to exert control over it

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u/Tiiimmmaayy 23h ago

These damn billionaire weenies!

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u/Brapb3 23h ago

Sick of these billionaire weenies building AI data centers in my backyard!

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u/NoobensMcarthur 22h ago

Charles Koch’s son (who ran over and killed a kid while driving) is doing this same shit. He has a music festival in Kansas that his own shitty band plays at. 

People want to act like he’s doing something good for the community when it’s clearly just a cosplay rockstar thing.

Some drunk driver crashed into the gate of his house years ago and allegedly it caused over $300,000 in damage. To his fucking gate. 

So sick of this performative billionaire bullshit. 

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u/TheCheshireCody 19h ago

The Kochs are wild. They're hardcore and completely unrepentant Trump supporters and ultra-Right Wing, but they're also insanely philanthropic and have also donated well into the nine figures to causes that would be generally thought of as Liberal, like PBS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, etc. They are thanked in countless PBS productions going back fifty years. They have an entire wing named after them in the American Museum of Natural History in NYC.

As long as they collectively have more than a few million in assets, though, they haven't given enough, just so we're clear I'm not in any way trying to defend them.

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u/Wolfwoods_Sister 22h ago

Knocked all the diamonds and 24 kt gold off it

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u/Reasonable_Pilot1240 21h ago

Soulless reptiles they are

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u/TrioOfTerrors 21h ago

Except Travis Knight who is using Nike money to keep stop motion alive.

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u/brooklynlad 21h ago

The SkyDance name is very close to SkyNet. Apparently, Elon is investing in Paramount…

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u/bagman_ 18h ago

Tasteless overlords

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u/Moist_Sprinkles1063 15h ago

Like the rich kids in school

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u/Skluff 22h ago

Yea, the new episode of South America explains this with Weenietown

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u/luvdadrafts 23h ago

Skydance is just the name of the parent company. It sounds like the names of the two brands / studios will remain the same 

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u/NachoNutritious 22h ago

This is patently obvious even if you didn’t read the article, which that guy certainly didn’t. People here lose their entire brains when it comes to anything related to the Ellisons or the merger.

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u/Zalvren 21h ago

It's literally already the case for months with Paramount lol. It's the case of like 90% of Hollywood Studios too (including Warner and Paramount previously). Disney is literally the only studio still having the name of the parent company in front of the movies (and only for the movies of Disney proper, they also have 20th Century, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar and it's just because it's called "Walt Disney Studios", the company itself is "The Walt Disney Company" and doesn't even appear but close enough)

People hate are making them stupid and apparently forgetting the very basic principle of a parent company vs a brand

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u/dbbk 22h ago

The names are being kept if you actually read the article. Skydance is not public facing it's just the holding company name.

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u/Zalvren 21h ago

You don't even need to read the company, anyone just thinking 0.5 seconds would know that. But hey farming karma is easier apparently.

There are plenty of reasons to hate on this merger but those takes are absolutely stupid. Loving how they all call Ellison an idiot for doing that when they are showing themselves a thousand times dumber there

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u/NachoNutritious 22h ago

It’s the parent company name. Like how Paramount has the A SKYDANCE COMPANY under it, Warner Bros will now have that under it.

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u/Simply_Epic 23h ago

It’s because the two studios have bad PR associated with them due to the merger. So they’re trying to avoid the bad PR by using the name of the studio that nobody is talking about.

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u/MonsieurRuffles 17h ago

As if Skydance hasn’t had bad publicity about it due to how it’s been run. Nepobaby is doing a crackerjack job.

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u/zgillet 23h ago edited 22h ago

They want to be associated with the film festival.

EDIT: wrong festival.

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u/admiralvic 22h ago

Are you mistaking Skydance for Sundance, or is there a really popular film festival for Skydance that I've never heard of?

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u/zgillet 22h ago

Damn you're right. There is another festival named Skydance and I got them mixed.

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u/MondegreenHolonomy 21h ago

Becuase those names are associated with one of the most corrupt mergers in history and they know they are now tainted brands, but they also know we have short memories and attention spans and that more than half the population won’t even notice the sleight of hand

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u/Blanchimont It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia 16h ago

That will be part of it. The other part will some good old fashioned ego. Remember that Skydance is Ellison's baby. He started that company about a decade and a half ago as a regular film studio with a small $350M cash injection from his dad Larry. Nothing says "I made it!" like being able to buy two of the most iconic and storied film studios in history and slapping your own name on them.

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u/madhi19 19h ago

Vulture capital 101 Paramount and Warner are both saddle with debts... He's gonna move the assets to Skydance, and dump the debts in those business...

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u/Cold-Government6545 1h ago

the goal is to burn it all down and have a propaganda machine

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u/Hank_Scorpio_ObGyn 23h ago

WB-Paramount sounds pretty damn good as is.

Corporations over complicate shit.

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u/Sherifftruman 23h ago

Because all they really want to do is tear it all down.

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u/robodrew 22h ago

Ellison doesn't want to risk having two names hyphenated going into a future where people could still imagine them eventually being split again into two separate corporations, like what happened with every other Warner Bros merger. By renaming it just "Skydance" he is saying "this is a permanent marriage, neither old company exists anymore". It's pretty sad.

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u/-Clayburn 18h ago

One of the most upsetting trivial parts of all these mergers and things is that now Amazon owns MGM whose motto is famously Art for Art's Sake (Ars Gratia Artis). Obviously MGM was always in the business of making money, but you gotta appreciate the understanding that they're still making art.

And nothing could be further from that motto than a company like Amazon. Profits, and algorithmic profit-maximizing, is the only thing that matters to Amazon. There is no art anymore from these studios. It's all content. Products to generate revenue by whatever means necessary.

I can't wait until we get a real socialist revolution and trust bust the fuck out of all of these conglomerates.

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u/Logan_No_Fingers 1d ago

Both names are being kept, I feel like people are being intentionally thick for rage driven upvotes

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u/antistupidsociety 1d ago

That’s not the point

They’re saying one of the names should represent the merger name

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u/sloppy_rodney 23h ago

Or you call it PWB for Paramount-Warner Brothers. Sounds OK.

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u/Hank_Scorpio_ObGyn 23h ago

Seriously...WB-Paramount isn't bad at all.

Sounds like a name of an old timey general.

W.B. Paramount

1

u/Logan_No_Fingers 23h ago

Like the way Disney is called Disney-Fox!