Paramount Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison has rolled out his Skydance executive team, which includes several senior Warner Bros. executives who will segue into new roles at the soon-to-be merged Skydance media company.
HBO Chairman Casey Bloys, CNN Chairman Mark Thompson, Discovery streaming executive J.B. Perrette and DC Comics managers James Gunn and Peter Safran will join Ellison at Skydance. Paramount executives will fill out the rest of Ellison’s leadership team.
CBS News Bari Weiss will continue in her current job as editor-in-chief but she will not have a role at the larger CNN Worldwide, which will continue to be managed by Thompson — a move that should help calm an anxious CNN newsroom after much turmoil.
The $111-billion merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery is expected to close Tuesday, disbanding Warner’s corporate structure and retiring Warner investors at $31.17 a share. The combined company will carry more than $80 billion in debt.
The transaction marks the departures of high-level Warner executives, including Chief Executive David Zaslav, Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels and Warner Bros. studio chiefs Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdy, who learned late last week that they would not be included in the larger entertainment company.
Ellison previously announced that former Mattel chief executive, Ynon Kreiz, would run Skydance’s day-to-day operations as co-chief executive. Kreiz started his new job at Skydance on Monday.
Here are the Skydance division heads and their new titles:
◆ Casey Bloys, the HBO chairman, becomes co-chair and chief content officer of Skydance direct-to-consumer streaming services.
◆ George Cheeks, the CBS chief who joined Paramount last year, earned a spot as co-chair and chief content officer at Skydance TV, which includes the network and both company’s entertainment cable channels.
◆ Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, the longtime Skydance film executives who currently run Paramount Pictures, will become co-chairs of the Skydance Motion Picture Group, which also includes Warner Bros.
◆ Gunn and Safran stay on as co-chairmen of DC Studios.
◆ Perrette, who oversaw the HBO Max product offering, now becomes co-chair and chief business officer for Skydance TV and Skydance’s streaming offerings.
Ellison promoted existing executive team members to serve in corporate roles at the new firm with larger portfolios. Those executives are:
◆ Andy Gordon, the former Goldman Sachs banker, who will become president of Skydance.
◆ Dennis Cinelli, who stays on as chief financial officer.
◆ Makan Delrahim, the architect of Paramount’s strategy to win regulatory approval, who will continue as chief legal officer and president of global corporate affairs for Skydance.
◆ Dane Glasgow, a former vice president at Facebook who recently joined Paramount, who becomes chief product officer.
◆ Rebecca Mall, a former Google and William Morris executives, who will become chief marketing officer.
◆ Spokeswoman Melissa Zukerman, who will stay on as Skydance chief communications officer.
The executives jointly report to Ellison and Kreiz.
The company said a complete list of the new executive leadership team would be disclosed after the merger closes.
One prominent Paramount executive, Cindy Holland, resigned last week to make way for Bloys to run the streaming programming for the combined company.
