Last month, Skydance Media, the entertainment giant, completed an $8 billion acquisition of one of Hollywood’s most prestigious studios, Paramount. Skydance, owned by David Ellison, son of Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison, now reportedly has its eyes set on another historic movie studio: Warner Bros.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Paramount Skydance is currently preparing a majority cash bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. If completed, the son of one of Donald Trump’s most powerful supporters (and, as of this week, the tech billionaire to unseat Elon Musk as the world’s richest person) would own a gargantuan portion of America’s entertainment industry.
Not a whole lot of information has been released yet about the reported deal. The Journal notes that the bid would be for “the entire company, including its cable networks and movie studio.” Gizmodo reached out to Paramount and Warner Bros. for more information.
The Ellison elder has been described as a personal “friend” of Trump, and the New York Times reports that, not long after Trump’s presidential victory, Ellison “appeared at Mar-a-Lago to sit in on a transition meeting.” He also visited the White House earlier this year to take part in the launch of the Stargate Project, an AI infrastructure initiative that will be a boon for the data center industry.
Ellison Sr. has also floated the idea of buying TikTok, which would put the family in control of yet another massive media acquisition, albeit of a slightly different kind. Last August, the New York Times reported that Oracle was helping the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing org behind Project 2025, to identify a list of Trump loyalists for the new administration.
There appears to be an Ellison family interest in propping up conservative voices. A report published earlier this month by Puck stated that Ellison Jr. was looking to buy Bari Weiss’s The Free Press for somewhere between $100 and $200 million. The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Ellison is considering giving Weiss a top editorial position at CBS, which is owned by Paramount.
At the same time, Ellison Jr. has also been accused of engaging in a “side deal” with President Trump as part of CBS’s $16 million settlement with the president over what he said was an unfairly edited interview with Kamala Harris from last year. That alleged side deal supposedly “up to $20 million of programming in support of conservative causes,” although Paramount immediately clarified “that it wasn’t aware of such terms,” the Hollywood Reporter reported in August. Nevertheless, House Democrats have announced their intentions to look into the matter.
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