Thank you Dan for bringing up the layoffs and possibility of people losing their jobs. As an employee of National Amusements it’s disheartening sometimes to see most only mention how this affects IP or studio properties.
I’m hoping it’s SkyDance. I would prefer Paramount not become the same victim Fox was when Disney was given it and we already got one awful corporate mega merger.
@@TheSoldierOfFortune924 I would get my hopes up, just because Shari Redstone doesn’t want Paramount to go through what Fox did when Disney was given them
Fox is doing fine, their biggest movie avatar is massive success and lot more coming this year such as kingdom planet apes, alien romulus, and of course deadpool3
I just hate this news. Not because I particularly care about Paramount but because a lot of people are going to be out of jobs & it’s one less studio so it’ll be less opportunities for filmmakers
One reason Paramount is in trouble, is they do not have theme parks like Disney or Universal to make money during a time when the box office is stuggling , or part of a big company like Sony or Apple with other consumer products to cover any losses from the studio. Also, Paramount brands like MTV and nickelodeon are not the huge cultural touchstones like they were in the 90s, + less people are watching their cable channels.
Theatrical is irrelevant to these companies even Disney in 2018 and 2019 theatrical was a side note compared to TV, sports, Theme parks, licencing and merchandise.
@@tiffanysandmeier4753 Boxoffice revenue isn't studio revenue so that's 50+% gone followed by revenue sharing and obviously the costs of the films and films in production etc. Theatrical is a prestige business now not really a money making one unless you have something that sells lots of merch and even then it's lots of money to a small independent like Lucasfilm not a global media conglomerate like Disney. Theatrical was massive in the pre-1950's era because you had news reels, cartoon and serial matinee's etc and most importantly little to no competition from TV yet.
@@goldsearcher7606 there the Nickelodeon Universe in new jersey, but It is a lot smaller than Disney world or Unviersal studios in florida, and of course the many other parks across the world
The problem is that movies aren’t as profitable as they were five years ago. We all know this from Dan’s charts. Regardless of whoever buys Paramount, if anyone. Would they somehow figure out how to start making as much as they did before 2020? Highly unlikely. Another major movie studio going away is probably inevitable at this point.
Having a movie maker like Ellison, also a successful businessman, at the top of a studio is what's best for the business, so having Skydance win the bid is my choice.
lol he does seem savy, but the issue is that he is trying to swindle the b shares of paramount in the merger with his company. Basically he is valuing his company, Skydance, at a nosebleed valuation. Lawsuits abound if Sheri Redstone attempts this coup against minority owners.
I am scared about this corprate merger. Especially, after seeing all the layoffs from Warner Bros and Discovery. We shouldn't be moving closer to an oligarchy.
I feel it’s one thing to sell or buy an IP’s rights or a mini studio with inside a big studio but for two big studios to merge or one to be bought be the other is a little too much. I’d rather these studios just be their own thing while just playing the competition game with each other. When competition decreases that doesn’t always lead to something good. Competition is good for every business if you can put out good stuff.
The deal with Skydance would've been the best deal for the artists creating the classics of today. It's unfortunate that corporate chicanery let the exclusivity deal with Skydance expire. Witnessing Paramount being sold for parts will be hard to bear.
This is why I enjoy your channel so much Dan...you understand that this is more than just telling us whether or not our latest adaptation of a major IP fits our interests or not. You're passionate about the filmmaking art, with all its flaws and at all angles. More life to you bro. Love from Botswana 🇧🇼
@@omk9905 They do but they also don't want to get FTC'd, yes mergers are terrible as they are good for someone but they can't make the oligarchy looks so obvious
Such a comprehensive, balanced and straight forward overview of the situation. I know that's what Dan is best at, but he never ceases to impress. Thank you, Dan.
Shareholders are so weird. They’re like gamblers that can yell at and try to control the casino so they make their money back instead of an actual casino where if you did that they’d beat you up and kick you out.
Except when you are a shareholder, you own the actual casino. You seem to be misunderstanding something. As owners of Paramount Global, they have every right to demand that if a sale occurs, they receive a fair amount of benefits from the sale. No one is stopping Skydance from offering an all cash buy out for Paramount Global like what Apollo-Sony is doing now.
Apollo wont strip Paramount apart. Im in a company that they bought. They paid above market rate. Looking at their previous acquisitions and what’s currently happening at ours, they make the company more efficient and less wasteful and build the brand. Then in 5-7 years sell the company for a big profit for themselves. I have personally experienced them making the place i work for better by expanding the business and getting rid of useless upper management. I wouldn’t put Apollo in the “strip and part out” group. They also have extremely deep pockets. I can see them raising Paramount to new heights.
If Apollo are partnering with Sony they will sell bits just like Apollo sold bits of Yahoo when they bought it off of Verizon. Selling BET and CBS (the network and stations not the I.P and studio's) would benefit both Paramount and whoever they sell them to (Tyler Perry or Byron Allen for BET and WBD for CBS unless someone else outbids them Zaslav really wants a big 3 broadcast network and NFL)
Reports came out today saying that Sony and Apollo would merge the studios and sell CBS, the linear cable channels and Paramount+. I think that fits very much into the "strip for parts" description.
Well it was revealed today that Apollo/Sony would only keep Paramount Pictures and sell the rest of the company inclusing CBS and Paramount+. So they do intend to break the group apart and stay an arms dealer. That would be really Bad news for Hollywood if it comes through
Fox is essentially dead Yes Disney uses some of its IP’s to release some films (Planet of The Apes, Avatar) but they are only producing franchise films The essence of Fox is dead, no original films (Disney doesn’t do those) I don’t want the same to happen with Paramount The theaters are dying and not having enough Studios doesn’t help it just worsens the situation
Searchlight pictures do release some films at least. All of Us Strangers and Poor Things come to mind. But, yes, not enough, and these are still made for the cynical research of building "prestige" and garnering awards.
I nerd out over such videos as it covers both areas of interest - business and movies! Kudos again to Dan for such a lovely, yet accessible deep dive into the story! Also, yes, the SkyDance deal is preferable - lesser big studios is never good
Warner Bros is having a BANGER of a year so far, what are you talking about? And Disney, despite their troubles, has easily the biggest and most impressive catalog of IP they can rely on. They're only now beginning to take advantage of the Fox catalog.
Paramount Global needs to change dramatically if they want to stay an independent Hollywood Studio. I just don't know if the current 3 CEOs can do that.
I'm kind of shocked the Skydance deal went through but I feel considerably better about that merger than the Sony/Apollo deal. We need more studios, more variety, more chances being taken. Not less.
Thank you for covering this side of the news, so thoroughly and so clearly! I would prefer SkyDance, but atp, I agree that money will talk and Sony will take it.
Studio mergers are not ideal, but wouldn't there now be 7 major studios? 1. Netflix 2. Amazon 3. Apple 4. Sony/Paramount 5. Disney/Fox 6. Warner Bros Discovery 7. NBC Universal
Netflix, Amazon and Apple - and clearly this say nothing in regards to quality - count as Streaming Services / Tech Companies. They're not classic movie studios like Disney/Fox, WarnerDiscovery, NBC Universal or Sony (do you remember there was a time, where it was called Sony TriStar because of them buying the old TriStar movie studio?).
Skydance is an unacceptable condition for the shareholders of class b. Who would love to value it at a ridiculous price and merge it? It's a loss to shareholders.
Folks, Sony isn't buying Paramount for its franchises i.e. Star Trek, they're buying them for them for the their film and music library and Paramount happens to own of the most valuable film libraries going back to its founding. With a library like that of Paramount Sony would have access to a back catalog of licensable material combined with what it inherited from the purchase of Columbia/Tri-Star decades ago.
14:15 the company value will likely only decrease from here on out if they wait. executive departures, perception of non voting shares getting shortchanged, overall mismanagement, etc., will not help the market image.
Well, I think Sony and Apollo will make a joint bid for Paramount. They will reduce the big major studios from five down to four, just like Disney did to Fox as the remaining five from six. If Sony/Apollo bought Paramount, Columbia Pictures would co-exist as a production arm, or it would even get shut down and folded into Paramount Pictures. I hope it's going to badly suck, and that sure would be ugly. James Cameron doesn't want Sony/Apollo to buy Paramount, because it would ever stay Paramount alive. Not only that, David Ellison's Skydance is attempting to acquire National Amusements, not Paramount, but Skydance is possibly going to beat up Sony/Apollo, it would win the bid for Paramount the other way around.
Sony knows a streaming service is risky. They were the option studio to not jump into it like everyone else. If Sony gets Paramount, I expect Paramount+ to die and have everything move to Netflix as Sony and Netflix have a deal rn
Spyglass is an independent company, with Paramount distributing the Scream movies. So they could continue their relationship with Paramount or seek a new distributor if they desired or the new studio didn't want to continue their arrangement.
It is sad to see Paramount go into decline over the years. During the 80 and 90s it was a powerhouse, with movies like Top Gun, Indiana Jones , Beverly Hills Cop., Ghost etc. The loss of the distrubtion rights to the MCU when Disney bought Marvel, really hurt them in the 2010s,, as well as the decline of viewership in cable and network tv (CBS, MTV , etc)
Skydance is a studio on the rise with a solid deal on the table. If Class B shareholders have faith in the entertainment industry they invested in, they’ll be able wait for the studio to release projects and become profitable, or sell at the market high price once the merger is concluded. Sony is a flailing studio that is combining its offer with a partner, to stand on the shaky ground of the company having to shed broadcast assets; I’d expect share prices to fall and the buyout to be low at the time of final negotiations. In my uninvested opinion, Skydance offers the better of these two strategies.
Sadly, odds are that Paramount and Paramount Plus will disappear one way or the other. If they continue alone, they probably collapse inside of a few years unless they strike gold with an unknown property (or seven). Maybe the name and creative vision would continue under Skydance, but the shareholder rebellion could be a quagmire. As much as I hate to say it, Sony’s offer seems the most viable route (if they can navigate out of their anti-trust problems), but it might be detrimental to the creative side. I don’t know enough about Apollo, but Sony’s live-action Marvel movies are atrocious. Investors don’t like risk, and creative entertainment requires risk. It’s a mess
I don’t think merging with Sony/Apollo would be good for Hollywood in general as studios would play it more “safe” and be even less creative. I hope the Skydance deal goes through or maybe another “mini-major studio” like Lionsgate, Amblin/Dreamworks, or A24. Heck I’d rather see Roku or Netflix merge with Paramount than a PE firm like Apollo just destroy them.
Oh... they do care about the legacy and value of the company, the private equity firms. That legacy has value. Can't strip something down for parts if nobody cares about the parts. CBS studios, yea, that has a legacy and is valuable so thats good when they sell it. Star Trek, huge nerd community selling it would bring in tons of money, all while they extract their management fees from the company until it withers and dies.
I watched one of the I love Lucy documentaries and looked up their production company, and it was the original producer of Star Trek. The original series was canceled after CBS acquired it.
I think skydance would be the best case scenario. But even Sony would be better than Warner bros. I don't like the direction at all their ceo has taken these last few years and the less they own, the better
Hey Dan I thought Distribution and Production could not be under the same house? Legally I thought they broke that up because of monopoly. So how can Skydance obtain Paramount?
Production and exhibition aren't allowed to be controlled by studios anymore, i.e. studio ownership of movie theaters that could shut out competition. Neither Paramount nor Skydance are in the exhibition business. As long as the government rules that there are a sufficient number of studios to allow for competition, they can merge as much as they want.
Dont let low ball garage shopping elison get it. Have elan musk buy it and merge with Warner Bros. In time and take over nflx. Paramount at $10 nflx $669. Same Revenues 😮. Nickelodeon alone is worth 10 billion. CBS #1 broadcast in the world
The idea of Sony acquiring Paramount is both terrifying and kinda funny to me. My first thought went to Star Trek and how awful it has been since 2017 with the exceptions of Strange New Worlds and Picard's final season. If we thought Star Trek was bad in the past 7 years just wait and see how Sony would completely tank it.
Plus: If Sony/Apollo sells CBS, Paramount+ etc, then I guess we would have the same problem like in years before: That the brand of "Star Trek" could not operate in cinema / movies and TV / streaming shows. That was the best time as you could watch "Next Generation", "Deep Space Nine", "Voyager" and had the same team and people in the movies. I guess if they sell CBS then we will have the same kind of "Star Trek" problem again - or what do you think, @danmurrelmovies ?
Sony buying Paramount less than a decade after the hack? What a comeback story. On that note, I can’t be the only one who thinks Disney did so “well” last decade because of other studios stumbling.
Other studios may have stumbled, but I think Disney made smart acquisitions and let the creatives do their thing. That is probably why Disney was so successful. The timing of the Fox acquisition was such that it was completed only 1 year before covid. There was a lot of mess with Fox, and they probably shouldn't have bought it. It is likely still sucking Disney down. No, it isn't the only problems with current Disney, but it probably does impact.
@@1378N It was seen as marking the start of an audience-alienating era of sorts, especially since The Emoji Movie for instance was green-lit right after for one thing.
@@tiffanysandmeier4753 This reminds me of how people were accusing Disney of artificially inflating the box office for Captain Marvel…right as they were finishing a $60 billion+ acquisition of another major movie studio. Talk about missing the forest for the trees.
@@LinkMarioSamus Something Something to do with companies buying theater seats for people. Either way, many people still made the effort to watch the movie in theaters.
No, I'm not. There are currently five acknowledged major studios: Warner Brothers, Sony, Disney, Universal, and Paramount. The others are either streamers (Netflix, Amazon, Apple, etc) mid-majors (Lionsgate) or indie studios (A24, Neon, etc). I do this for a living and I know how many major studios there are.
Worth noting that Apollo is also a minority investor in Legendary, the production company that recently produced the Dune movies and many of Chris Nolan movies. They know the sector pretty well
My Daughter (almost 3) loves Paramount+. It has Peppa Pig, Paw Patrol and Blue's Clues. We have the ad version. Half the ads are self-ads, so she knows "Paramount Plus" by name.
@@the7percentsolution Discovery might have a different feel to TNG and DS9 and so on, and the overarching plots each season be a bit farfetched, but it's surprisingly good at the moment-to-moment character stuff. If all you've seen is Mike Jay & Rich Evans taking the piss out of it, it might be worth giving it a few episodes.
I do hate how the ‘business’ side of ‘show business’ is always prioritised. I always shudder whenever I hear the words ‘asset management’. If they’re involved with anything all that happens is stripping it down, with it the bulk of the talented hardworking people involved and focusing entirely on share prices before dumping it.
They aren't only prioritised, they are the only thing that matters. The output of these big studios is 90% corporate garbage. It's incredible thinking about all the films I've seen year in the cinema (48 now) and how rarely a big studio logo comes up. I think it's like 9 films, mostly from their Arthouse subsidiaries like Searchlight and Focus features. Looking at the film slate for any of these studios makes me want to kill myself.
Sony is the best bet. Sony has for years been wanting another studio to help them compete against Disney, Universal, and WB. Columbia + TriStar + Paramount under Sony Pictures will definitely hep with that. Plus Sony does care about their studios, when they bought Columbia from Coca Cola in the 80s they've kept it all unchanged, they could have renamed it but they didn't and now Columbia just recently celebrated their 100th anniversary
Skydance would be the better deal for audiences. We would avoid another merger of studios and we would keep an independent studio/streamer, this time with deeper pockets and supposedly a film savvy CEO (I won't mention the fact that he is a nepo baby lmao) Sony will just absorb Paramount's catalog and output, sell away the other assets and get rid off a major competitor. Not good for creatives to have one less employer!
Tbh I can’t wait for the anti-trust craze to hit film and TV Disney and Fox shouldn’t have been allowed to merge and Sony and Paramount shouldn’t either.
Unless disney/fox is undone, a sony paramount merger is actually needed for the two. Right now the market has Disney, Universal, Netflix, and Amazon all companies with HUGE Pockets. Sony has pockets but also it has mindshare, Playstation, which has the brand recognition to actually compete with the big dogs. Paramount doesn't have pockets but has recognizable ip's. Something Sony needs. Playstation mau, + Crunchyroll mau, + Paramount mau can actually compete with the likes of the aforementioned. Otherwise Sony, Paramount, and WBD are basically beholden to their competitors' streaming services Amazon, netflix, disney.
Thank you Dan for the update on the Paramount state of affairs. I had never heard of Apollo until this video. Very interesting situation there. I really hope Sony doesn’t end up absorbing it. I’m with you. I don’t like the idea of there being only four major studios.
I think Apple could benefit from acquiring Paramount's IP and water tower studio, which would provide Apple TV+ with a lot of new content. They also have infinite cash.
National amusements isn't the parent company of Paramount Global. NA owns less than 10% of Paramount Global's equity. They control voting power not ownership.
One factor here is Byron Allen is beyond the Sony deal. The only reason he had to team up with Sony is because Paramount didn't 'believe' he actually had the financial backing for the amount he was offering (I'll just leave it alone as to why they would question that) but anyway, he teamed up and backed by Sony. One factor that many are not realizing with this is why he wants to buy it. This began with Byron Allen wanting to buy BET & MTV (if he could). In the music space, many people don't realize the damage Viacom did to the entire music industry when they bought the music channels and turned them into reality tv hell. It's why Ridiculousness plays on MTV on repeat all day instead of ... I don't .... MUSIC. That caused MAJOR damage to the music industry and why it's in the trash state it's in now. Byron Allen is a smart enough business man to see the advantage of having the entire studio with Sony. Yes, people will lose jobs, but what's the alternative, the company stays in the red and goes bankrupt and people still lose jobs, so ... yeah, that's business. While I have no faith in Sony's leadership, I do have faith in Byron Allen. Paramount would be idiots not to take that deal.
I think you've got the deals a little mixed up. Byron Allen made his own offer to buy Paramount, which wasn't accepted, and still has shown interest in acquiring it. But he's not involved in the Sony deal. That's a joint venture between Sony and Apollo Global Management, which he's not involved with.
Now what I need is Dan to explain the terms of the merger, how long it'll take and what it means for the future of Star Trek and other Paramount IP. Seems like everyone and their grandma has an opinion but there's only one person I trust to give it to me straight and in a manner I understand. I'll be hitting refresh at regular intervals in anticipation.
Here's a hot take. Why don't the shareholders shut up. They are a pain and they should just zip it. I have a lot more thoughts but for now that's really all I want to say.
