Next week, Paramount and Warner Bros. will officially combine into one mega-studio with a familiar name: Skydance. The deal is expected to close on Tuesday.
“By combining them, we aren’t rewriting history — we’re equipping these iconic studios with a more powerful engine. Together, we are Skydance: a creative-first home for bold, quality storytelling,” CEO David Elllison wrote on X Friday when announcing the new name.
But Ellison’s Skydance Media has been active since 2006, and has a track record of producing primarily franchise titles, action films and streaming fare, though its television slate is somewhat more diverse.
Of course franchises like “G.I. Joe” and “Star Trek” will remain a priority for the new studio, but does Skydance’s track record indicate anything about where the new combined studio’s priority will lie?
It seems unlikely that the Warner Bros. label will give up making awards contenders, or that Paramount will abandon rom-coms. But one thing seems to be a given: Ellison is big on crowd-pleasers, action films and familiar franchises, some that are decades-old.
Skydance have earned more than $8.7 billion at the global box office, a healthy haul for a relatively small player. But how will the name translate from a production shingle making a handful of films and shows a year to a massive combined operation that Ellison promises will release at least 30 movies per year? If nothing else, Mark Wahlberg probably doesn’t need to worry about his career prospects for a while.
Here are five takeaways from Skydance Media’s earlier films and TV series:
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Skydance Plays Favorites
Image Credit: Getty Skydance plays favorites, and its favorite favorite is unquestionably Tom Cruise. Expect more collaborations between the action icon and Ellison, even if “Mission: Impossible” was put to bed (for now). They already have a “Days of Thunder” sequel on the docket. Also, important to note, thousands of Hollywood stars have formally expressed disdain for a combined Paramount-Warner Bros., but Cruise told “The Pat McAfee Show” that he’s confident Skydance is “going to deliver” on its promises of revitalizing the movie business. Another Skydance favorite is Mark Wahlberg, who led the two “Family Plan” films for the studio. Ryan Reynolds is a frequent collaborator as well, starring in “Mayday,” “The Adam Project” and “6 Underground.” John Krasinski is a Skydance regular. He played the titular superspy across four seasons of “Jack Ryan,” and co-starred with Natalie Portman in “The Fountain of Youth.” The last name to look out for is Arnold Schwarzenegger. He did two “Terminator” sequels and starred in two seasons of “Fubar” for Skydance.
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Skydance Is Now an IP Machine
Image Credit: Skydance One of the most valuable assets Ellison acquired in the merger was the Warner Bros. library and their toy box of IP. DC Studios, “Harry Potter,” “Lord of the Rings,” “Game of Thrones,” Looney Tunes and “Scooby-Doo” are now all property of Skydance. Iconic films like “Blade Runner,” “Goodfellas,” “The Goonies,” “The Matrix,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” “Ocean’s 11,” “Vacation” and “Gremlins” are also now in Skydance’s hands, all ripe for exploitation. It’s not hard to imagine any of these properties getting rebooted or retooled into TV series to help kick-start the slate.
Skydance Media was already producing films for franchises like “Mission: Impossible,” “Top Gun,” “Star Trek” and “Transformers,” which will certainly play a role in filling out Ellison’s promise of 30 films a year.
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Big and Small Screens
Image Credit: Aimee Spinks/Netflix Skydance Media certainly produced some of the biggest hits at the box office in recent years, from “Top Gun: Maverick” to “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” and “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.”
But Skydance has also focused extensively on made-for-streaming films and their sequels. “The Family Plan” brought favorite son Wahlberg into a more comedic action role, and was a hit on Apple TV+, spurring the upcoming “The Family Plan 2.” Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Old Guard” proved popular on Netflix, and also begot a sequel.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean the new Skydance will lean more heavily into streaming than before. The terms of the merger state that Skydance’s wide release films must have a 45-day theatrical distribution period, and the company can’t release those movies on any subscription streaming platform — including Paramount+ — sooner than 90 days after they premiere in theaters.
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Action, Action and More Action
Image Credit: Courtesy of Paramount Pictures Pick a Skydance movie poster at random, and chances are it features a bloodied movie star holding a gun. Aside from a few early outliers (2010’s “True Grit” and 2012’s “Guilt Trip”), it’s been all action all the time from the Ellison camp. It seems Skydance fell in love with the genre, and its eventual favorite star, Tom Cruise, after the release of 2011’s “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.” Just a year later, Skydance and Paramount teamed again to attach Cruise to “Jack Reacher.” In the years following, Skydance produced films like “World War Z,” “G.I. Joe: Retaliation,” “Star Trek Beyond,” “Baywatch,” “Annihilation” and “Gemini Man.” Recent Skydance titles include “Mayday,” “The Family Plan 2,” “Fountain of Youth,” “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” “The Gorge” and “Heart of Stone.”
Ellison has repeatedly deemed himself a movie fan first and an executive second. He’s also made it no secret that Skydance’s creative direction is largely aligned with his own tastes. In the settlement with the state AG’s, Ellison promised to maintain both the Warner Bros. and Paramount lots as separate entities. But as we learned on Friday, Paramount film heads Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein will oversee both movie studios. Greenstein came from Sony, but Goldberg has been with Skydance for decades. The question now is: How will they balance the prestigious history of Warner Bros., the studio behind “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “The Shining,” “Goodfellas,” and the most recent best picture winner, “One Battle After Another,” with Ellison’s crowd-pleaser approach?
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Skydance Television: Diverse Selection
Image Credit: Sophie Giraud/Prime Skydance series like the massively popular “Reacher” and its spinoff “Neagley” are extensions of the company’s core Jack Reacher universe. But other series have gone in different directions: “Grace and Frankie,” which streamed for seven seasons on Netflix, garnered numerous Emmy nominations for the Jane Fonda-Lily Tomlin comedy. Apple TV+ series “Foundation” totaled three seasons of ambitious sci-fi, and action comedy “FUBAR” on Netflix starred Arnold Schwarzenegger in his first TV series leading role.
However, Skydance Television never quite broke through with the kind of Emmy-sweeping fare produced by Skydance’s new subsidiary HBO, so it’s probably a hopeful sign that the premium cabler will continue to operate independently.