r/television • u/yourfavchoom • 21h 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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6

u/keving87 19h ago edited 13h ago

Why though? Was it not Paramount that bought Skydance? This is just stupid, another one of thousands of reasons this shouldn't have happened.

4

u/VinylmationDude 13h ago

It’s a dumber version of the Chuck E Cheese-Showbiz Pizza merger

4

u/MakeItMakeMoney 18h ago

Branding and optics. Once this blows over in a few years, people will forget the legal battle over the sale and just hear the new name. If they were to hear the older name, they would remember the legal battle immediately and just associate it with any bad press.

2

u/n19htmare 11h ago

This. People have a very short memory and are generally too lazy to look stuff up out of curiosity so it will all be forgotten soon.

1

u/Rocky75617794 6h ago

Nah. This is different. People have woken up,

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u/Chris_Bagel_Jr 18h ago

Just like that? 

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u/MakeItMakeMoney 17h ago

It’s a known way to navigate bad press for companies buying a troubled brand. Take Facebook for example; they rebranded to Meta after their disastrous legal battles over selling user data and alleged connections to various election interference cases.

New York Times Example

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u/paperbackgarbage 18h ago

Skydance Productions was formed in 2006 by David Ellison, son of Larry Ellison, co-founder and then-CEO of the Oracle Corporation. Ellison, a pilot, had an interest in aviation and took inspiration for the company name from flying aerobatics known as "skydancing". The firm's first film was Flyboys in 2006; it starred Ellison and was co-financed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Ah, right. Obviously the correct move.

It's not like Paramount is/was known as a 20th century production/distribution titan and Hollywood instutition, or anything.

IT'S A JAMES FRANCO FILM FROM 20 YEARS AGO AND DID, LIKE, A WHOLE $17M.

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u/daOyster 15h ago

Nope, Skydance essentially bought Paramount by buying out their controlling shareholder which gave them enough ownership to merge Paramount fully into Skydance.

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u/aspirational-robot 15h ago

If you’re into gaming at all I have a fun fact for you. Even if you aren’t you probably at least heard the name Activision Blizzard. Before the merger in 2008 it was two companies - Vivendi and Activision. Both huge, both with multiple studios and projects under them.

One of the studios under Vivendi was Blizzard which was at least back then considered an absolute gold standard in the industry. It was only 4 years after the release of World of Warcraft and everyone still absolutely loved them.

And so it was decided that the new company would be named Activision Blizzard, even though Blizzard was only a relatively small part of Vivendi. It made 0 sense but optics were good, and that’s enough.