Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service Plus. Resistance is futile.
As the drama around the sale of Warner Bros. continues to swirl with Paramount now the most likely inheritor of the studio, Paramount CEO David Ellison is carrying on like business is usual and that his latest acquisition will go through just fine and dandy. That means we’re already getting a little taste of what Ellison will do should Paramount successfully acquire Warner Bros.: starting with an unholy streaming megamerger that will bring the concept of cable TV back harder than ever before.
“We do plan to put the two services together, which today gives us a little over 200 million direct-to-consumer subscribers,” Ellison said of the company’s plan to merge Paramount Plus and HBO Max together during an investor call today, discussing the potential $110 billion deal for Skydance-Paramount to add Warner Bros. to itself (via Variety). “We think that really positions us to compete with the leaders in the space at Paramount—by the middle of this year, we’ll have completed the consolidation of our three services under one unified stack, and you can see us taking a similar approach to this platform going forward.”
But despite Ellison’s yearning for assimilation, the CEO also said that HBO will, in some regard, maintain a level of independence should the deal go through. Ellison added that “HBO should stay HBO,” calling for the brand “to continue doing more,” even as its surroundings are subsumed into Paramount. He further noted that Game of Thrones is his favorite HBO show (doesn’t he know we’re all in our Knight of the Seven Kingdoms era now?).
“By uniting our iconic studios complimentary streaming platforms with a global footprint, our cable and linear networks, and our world-class IP, we have the opportunity to help shape the future and build a next generation media and entertainment company. This has been our goal since day one,” Ellison continued (this time from The Hollywood Reporter). “This is not about consolidation, it’s about reinventing the business. We want to expand our reach and enhance our ability to create the world’s most compelling stories and experiences. And we’re incredibly excited about this transaction, and it will accelerate that ambition.”
It turns out that, for now, reinventing the business looks an awful lot like consolidation.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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