Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison’s $6 billion in planned cost cuts as part of a merger with Warner Bros. Discovery has triggered fears of devasting layoffs as two of Hollywood’s largest studios and streamers move to combine, according to reports.
Ellison reaffirmed his goal of $6 billion in “synergies” – or an erasure of duplicate teams – if Paramount Skydance achieves regulatory approval for its acquisition of WBD, including HBO Max, CNN, thousands of Warner film titles and 30 soundstages in California.
WBD’s board signed the agreement Friday morning after Netflix failed to hike its own offer and backed out of a brutal monthslong bidding war.
Paramount and WBD staffers are now bracing themselves for “bloodbath” layoffs, with a Paramount employee saying there were wordless screams at the company’s Los Angeles office following news of the bidding war outcome, according to Page Six.
Many workers are reportedly hoping for a round of voluntary buyouts before things turn ugly.
The new conglomerate is expected to look for cost-cutting opportunities in Warner Bros.’ production teams, which currently employ about 7,500 of WBD’s 35,000 total staffers, according to Variety.
Paramount peaked at nearly 20,000 employees in August, before Ellison last year laid off about 1,000 of them with plans to cut 1,000 more.
“Think about the bloodletting of thousands of employees at CBS and Paramount, and now it will be more. Just awful,” an insider told Variety.
“It’s really going to be a shakeup for the whole community, the losses of jobs and content.”
Paramount did not respond to The Post’s requests for comment.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta cautioned regulatory hurdles remain.
“Paramount/Warner Bros is not a done deal,” the Dem said last week, though he did not detail his concerns.
“These two Hollywood titans have not cleared regulatory scrutiny – the California Department of Justice has an open investigation, and we intend to be vigorous in our review.”
The Justice Department and European regulators need to weigh in on the merger, too.
After observers feared that a Netflix purchase of WBD assets could thwart theatrical film releases, some film fanatics will likely “take comfort” that WBD is merging with another studio instead of the streaming giant, said Seth Schachner, managing director of Strat Americas, a Los Angeles-based media consulting firm.
Ellison on Monday pledged the two studios would churn out 30 films each year with an exclusive 45-day theatrical release window.
“But it’s going to be a brutal thing just with the job losses and cuts,” Schachner told The Post.
“You’re definitely going to see some type of organizational impact. For sure, there’ll be cost cuts and they’re going to lose people in the transition.”
Warner Bros. heir Gregory Orr – the grandson of founder Jack Warner and an early skeptic of the proposed Netflix deal – flipped his stance after Paramount Skydance claimed victory, fearful of Ellison’s history of intense layoffs.
Paramount’s “high debt” – a combined $79 billion once the deal goes through, according to Ellison – “will lead to downsizing and consolidation at Warner Bros.,” Orr told the Hollywood Reporter.
“The deal with Netflix was a good marriage,” the scion said, adding that Warner “merging with Paramount Skydance is like a shotgun wedding with your dumb cousin. I fear for the health of the kids.”
Meanwhile, CNN staffers are reportedly fearful that the deal could threaten their newsroom’s independence, after Ellison installed Bari Weiss at CBS News to bring more conservative voices to the network.
Anchors, producers and correspondents at the lefty network are concerned that President Trump will be on the phone daily orchestrating CBS and CNN coverage with the Ellisons and Weiss, The Post reported last week.
“Larry Ellison is great and his son David is great,” Trump told reporters in October. “They’re friends of mine. They’re big supporters of mine, and they’ll do the right thing.”
The younger Ellison assured Trump administration officials that he would make sweeping changes to CNN if he bought Warner Bros., the Wall Street Journal reported in December. His dad Larry, the billionaire founder of Oracle, is a close ally of Trump’s.
The president previously said he would not be involved in the deal’s review – but last week warned Netflix that it would “pay the consequences” if it didn’t fire former Biden official Susan Rice from its board.
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