David Ellison’s final maneuver to become the new king of Hollywood

David Ellison is the product of two passions: his mother’s love of cinema and his father’s taste for risk. He is also the founder of Skydance, the small film production company that in less than two years has swallowed up two industry giants—Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery—to create one of the world’s largest entertainment and communications empires, one with a vast film catalogue, news networks such as CBS and CNN; a constellation of TV channels including MTV, Nickelodeon, TCM, Discovery and TNT; and streaming platforms like HBO and Paramount+.

Ellison this week reached a deal with a group of attorneys general from a dozen Democratic-led states who had opposed the Paramount Skydance–Warner Bros. merger, arguing it violated antitrust laws and could harm competition. The businessman played hardball and, in a risky tactic, threatened the California attorney general leading the litigation with moving the century-old Hollywood studios to Nashville, Tennessee. Although he had to concede on several issues, the move will allow him to become the new king of Hollywood.

Many things about this 43-year-old businessman can be debated—whether he is a nepobaby, or his close ties to Donald Trump—but it is indisputable that he has shown boldness in building a new audiovisual empire in just over two years.

His father’s multimillion-dollar backing

He is the son of Larry Ellison, founder of the tech giant Oracle and one of the three richest men in the world, and Barbara Boothe Ellison, Larry’s third wife. She has been essential in the lives of David and his sister Megan, a noted film producer. The siblings grew up on a ranch in Woodside, near San Francisco Bay, around horses and far from their controversial father. Their mother instilled in them a love of the seventh art. She amassed a collection of hundreds of videotapes with Hollywood classics that they watched at night, and on Sundays she took them to the local movie theater. That is how David’s interest in the film industry began.

When he was barely 13, the young Ellison was captivated by one of the films he found among the VHS tapes at home: Top Gun. That became the connection to his father, with whom he had a distant relationship. They only spent a few weeks together each summer aboard his superyacht, named Ronin. A fan of samurai culture and World War II battles, Larry Ellison bought a SIAI-Marchetti S.211 jet trainer—purchased from the Italian Navy—to simulate aerial dogfights with his son. David soon began taking acrobatic flight lessons and within a few years was competing and performing stunts in planes.

It is said that Skydance’s name comes from those aerial dances. He founded the production company in 2006 after failing as an actor. David Ellison studied at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts to pursue a career in Hollywood. His first film as an actor, Flyboys, alongside James Franco, told the story of a legendary U.S. aerial squadron during World War I, but it was a box-office failure. His early acting attempts led him to appear in another film, Hole in One, a college comedy that did not get noticed very much.

To create Skydance he relied on his father’s invaluable help. The latter helped him raise, together with other investment funds, $350 million to begin producing films. He is the driving force behind the Mission: Impossible franchise and the architect of its box-office success. The third installment in the Tom Cruise–led series was coolly received and it seemed as though Ethan Hunt’s adventures were over, but Ellison decided to bet on the franchise, which was revitalized and became a benchmark of Hollywood action cinema.

Modernizing the industry

Gradually he scored box-office hits at the helm of Skydance, with the Jack Reacher series, World War Z, the Transformers films and the sequel to Top Gun. As the company grew, he expanded into video games and animated productions.

And then, just over two years ago, he set his sights on Paramount. The historic company, founded in 1912 by Adolph Zukor, had hit a rough patch after years of mismanagement and internal fights. In addition, the rise of streaming and the decline of cable TV were affecting the business. David Ellison understood the situation and convinced Shari Redstone, heir to Paramount’s largest share package, to sell the company for $8 billion. In doing so, Skydance—backed by Larry Ellison—acquired a much larger company and gained the Hollywood pedigree that money alone could not buy. The deal gave him access to Paramount’s large film catalog (more than 1,200 titles and rights over another 2,800), superhero sagas from Marvel, Indiana Jones and Star Trek, among many others, and channels such as CBS and MTV.

But Trump complicated matters. For six months the U.S. president blocked the deal—until last summer when the Federal Communications Commission gave final approval after a $16 million payment to the White House occupant to settle a lawsuit he had filed against CBS over an interview with Kamala Harris.

A grand ambition

While wrapping up the last details of the Paramount acquisition, David Ellison saw an opportunity to go after Warner Bros. Discovery, a larger group suffering problems similar to Paramount’s. Ellison had the vision to consolidate the industry to modernize the sector with more technology, lower costs and more profitable productions distributed on its own platforms.

But Netflix struck first. At the end of last year it announced a preliminary agreement to buy Warner, anticipating David Ellison, who did not give up. After submitting up to nine offers to shareholders of the storied studio, he persuaded them to suspend the Netflix deal to open a competitive bidding period. The world’s largest streaming company then withdrew from the race, leaving the field clear for Paramount Skydance to swallow up Warner at a price of $110 billion.

Concerns soon arose over the concentration of power in the Ellison family and suspicions about their closeness to Trump. In just over two years they had acquired two of the country’s main news networks, and they gained a prominence in Hollywood reminiscent of its bygone golden eras.

A group of 12 Democratic attorneys general filed a lawsuit to try to block the deal, but David Ellison pulled one last trick to unlock the litigation. In a speech to employees, Ellison said he expected to close the deal “in two weeks.” In a note published this week he allayed fears about moving to a different location: “Let me be clear: the new merged company will be headquartered in Los Angeles. We are not going anywhere. Our history is here and this is where our future is being built.”

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