Skydance Media CEO David Ellison (Shutterstock image)
Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison Pitches WBD Shareholders With Open Letter
December 10, 2025
Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison Dec. 10 sent a letter to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders reiterating why Paramount’s $108.4 billion all-cash offer would deliver superior value with a faster, more certain path to regulatory completion than the existing Netflix transaction.
Paramount Dec. 8 submitted a hostile bid to WBD’s board and shareholders, three days after Warner accepted a $72 billion mostly-cash offer from Netflix for its streaming and studio assets. Prior to accepting Netflix’s offer, WBD rejected six Paramount proposals over a 12-month period.
In the letter, Ellison encouraged shareholders to tender their shares in order to register their view with the WBD board of directors that they prefer the Paramount offer.
The CEO said Paramount’s offer is fiscally secure enough to endure the 12- to 18-month regulatory process, while claiming Netflix’s cash/stock offer is at the mercy of Wall Street. Indeed, Netflix’s stock price has dropped 20% in value over the past 22 days.
“This reduces the value of Netflix’s offer,” Ellison wrote in the letter.
Netflix’s acquisition of the WBD assets would be funded by $10.3 billion in cash, $50 billion in debt, $10.7 billion in studio and streaming debt, and $11.7 billion in equity consideration, according to a regulatory filing.
Netflix said it expects to realize $2 billion to $3 billion in cost synergies by the third year of the transaction. Paramount said it expects to see $6 billion in cost savings.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the streamer’s goal is to expand its presence in Hollywood.
“We’re not cutting jobs. We’re making jobs,” Sarandos said.
Paramount’s bid would reportedly be funded by $41 billion of new equity backed by the Ellison Family Trust (patriarch Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, is one of the wealthiest people in the world), RedBird Capital and $54 billion of debt commitments from Bank of America, Citi, Apollo Global Management, and President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, among others.
Paramount is offering to pay WBD a $5 billion break-up fee — $800 million less than Netflix’s break-up fee.
Ellison claims Netflix faces a much tougher regulatory challenge in the United States, in addition to heightened scrutiny in the United Kingdom and the European Union, where the streamer commands a 51% streaming video market share, compared to Disney’s 10% market share.
Netflix and HBO Max would have a combined 426 million paid subscribers, while Paramount+ and Max would have 204.1 million subscribers.
Yet, melding Paramount and WBD media assets would create the largest U.S. household TV market share — ahead of YouTube, Disney, NBCUniversal, Fox — and Netflix, according to Nielsen.
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