For the last decade, Paramount has been outgunned in the streaming wars, trying to keep up as tens of millions of people migrated from movie theaters and cable television and toward on-demand entertainment via the internet.
Now the company, which owns CBS, Comedy Central, MTV and the movie studio behind “The Godfather” and “Top Gun,” will finally get much-needed reinforcements.
The $8 billion merger of Paramount and the media company Skydance closed early Thursday morning, catapulting new power players to the top of Hollywood and ending a tortuous process that had lasted well over a year. Gone are the Redstones, whose family controlled CBS and Paramount Pictures for decades. In are the Ellisons. Skydance is controlled by David Ellison, a movie producer and the founder of the company who is the son of Larry Ellison, the tech titan and one of the world’s richest men.
The new owners give Paramount stronger financial wherewithal, and have ushered in set of new executives to call the shots. The result, if Skydance has its way, will be a reinvigorated competitor in an entertainment landscape that has mostly settled into place — Netflix and YouTube at the top, Disney and Amazon in the second tier, and everybody else scrambling for steady profitability, relevance or survival.
It could also usher in a new period of deal making, including future corporate mergers or streaming bundles.
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