With Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. expected to saddle the combined company with $79 billion in debt, Paramount executives are looking to do away with redundant assets including real estate — and there is a lot of that.
Chief in the public’s imagination are their historic studios in Burbank and Hollywood, where legendary films and television show have been made for generations and continue to operate year-round.
“Both of these studios are in the core [30-mile zone,] the inner circle of where Hollywood talent wants to be,” entertainment property broker Nicole Mihalka of CBRE said. “It’s very prime real estate.”
When Sony and Apollo were bidding for Paramount in early 2024, their plan was to sell the Paramount property, but there is no indication that Paramount would part with its namesake lot.
For now, Paramount’s plan is to keep both studios operating with each studio releasing about 15 films a year, but the goal is to eventually consolidate most of the studio operations around the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank in order to to eliminate redundancies with the Paramount lot on Melrose Avenue, people close to Chief Executive David Ellison said.
Paramount would not look to raze its celebrated studio lot — the oldest operating film studio in Los Angeles — because of various restrictions on historic buildings there. Paramount also has a relatively new post-production facility on site and will likely need to the studio space.
Instead, the plan would be to lease out space for film productions, including those from combined Paramount-HBO streaming operations. Ellison also is considering plans to develop other parts of the 65-acre site for possible retail use, as well as renting space for commercial offices.
The studios’ combined property holdings are vast, and real estate data provider CoStar estimates they have about 12 million square feet of overlapping uses, including their studio campuses, offices and long-term leases in such film centers as Burbank, Hollywood and New York.
Century-old Paramount Pictures Studios is awash in Hollywood history — think Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond desperately trying to enter its famous gate in “Sunset Boulevard,” and other classics such as “The Godfather,” “Titanic” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
The lot, however, is a congested warren of stages, offices, trailers and support facilities such as woodworking mills that date to the early 20th century. The layout is byzantine in part because Paramount bought the former rival RKO studio lot from Desilu Productions to create the lot known today.
Warner Bros. occupies 11 million square feet and owns 14 properties totaling 9.5 million square feet, largely in the United States and United Kingdom, CoStar said. About 3 million square feet of that commercial property is in the Los Angeles area.
The firm’s portfolio also includes the sprawling Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden complex in the U.K. and Turner Broadcasting System headquarters in Atlanta.
Paramount Skydance occupies 8 million square feet and owns 14 properties totaling 2.1 million square feet, according to CoStar. In addition to its Hollywood campus, Paramount’s holdings include prominent buildings in New York such as the Ed Sullivan Theater and CBS Broadcast Center.
Warner Bros. operates a 3-million-square-foot lot in Burbank with more than 30 soundstages — along with space for building sets and backlot areas — where famous movies including “Casablanca” and television shows such as “Friends” were filmed. Paramount’s 1.2-million-square-foot Melrose campus anchors a broader network of owned and leased production space, CoStar said.
Paramount’s lot is already cleared for more development. More than a decade ago, Paramount secured city approval to add 1.4 million square feet to its headquarters and some adjacent properties owned by the company.
The redevelopment plan, valued at $700 million in 2016, underwent years of environmental review and public outreach with neighbors and local business owners.
The plan would allow for construction of up to 1.9 million square feet of new stage, production office, support, office, and retail uses, and the removal of up to 537,600 square feet of existing stage, production office, support, office, and retail uses, for a net increase of nearly 1.4 million square feet.
The proposal preserves elements of the past by focusing future development on specific portions of the lot along Melrose and limited areas in the production core, architecture firm Rios said.
The Warner Bros. and Paramount lots “are two of the most prime pieces of real estate in the country,” Mihalka said. “These are legacy assets with a lot of potential to be [tourist] attractions in addition to working studios.”
Hollywood is still reeling from previous mergers, in addition to a sharp pullback in film and television production locallyas filmmakers chase tax credits offered overseas and in other states, including New York and New Jersey.
Last year, lawmakers boosted the annual amount allocated to the state’s film and TV tax credit program and expanded the criteria for eligible projects in an attempt to lure production back to California. So far, more than 100 film and TV projects have been awarded tax credits under the revamped program.
The benefits have been slow to materialize, but Mihalka predicts that the tax credits and desirability of working close to home will lead to more studio use in the Los Angeles area, including at Warner Bros. and Paramount.
“These are such prime locations that we’ll see show runners and talent push back on having shows located out of state and insist on being here,” she said. “I think you’re going to see more positive movement here.”
Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.
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