The Skydance name is now on top of two of Hollywood’s oldest studios. Here is what we hope comes next.
Dear Mr. Ellison,
Congratulations. On Tuesday, your takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery closes, and the combined company will start trading under a new ticker, SKYD. You announced on Friday that the Skydance name, the banner you founded in 2006, will now sit above Paramount, Warner Bros., HBO Max, CBS, CNN, DC and Nickelodeon. After a year-long bidding war, a federal antitrust fight and the most expensive deal in Hollywood history, you have earned the right to put your name on the door.
We understand the choice. A name like Paramount Skydance Warner Bros. Discovery would have been a legal document, not a brand. Naming the parent after either studio would have told the other one it lost. And Skydance is your company. It made Top Gun: Maverick and the modern Mission: Impossible films with Paramount, and it is the reason you were in a position to buy any of this at all. You have said the new name gives the company “an identity of its own while allowing Paramount and Warner Bros. to remain in the spotlight.” We would like to take you at your word.
So we are writing with a few requests from people who love these studios.
Please remember what the names on the water tower mean. Paramount has been making movies since 1912. Warner Bros. opened its doors in 1923. Between them, they have given audiences Casablanca, The Godfather, Chinatown, Titanic, Batman, Harry Potter and a century of others. The mountain and the shield are not logos to most moviegoers. They are a promise that something worth watching is about to start. That kind of trust cannot be bought, and it cannot be rebuilt once it is spent.
Please learn from what happened to Fox. When Disney bought 21st Century Fox, it kept the studio but dropped the name, and 20th Century Studios has released a fraction of the films it once did. The lot is still there. The legacy is still there. But the identity, and much of the output, faded. The happier example is Universal, which has lived under Comcast for more than a decade and still feels entirely like Universal, because the parent company stayed in the background and let the studio be a studio.
Please let the studios stay studios. Audiences will not care what the parent company is called, the same way few people know or care that their favorite theme park ride belongs to a cable company. What they will notice is whether Paramount and Warner Bros. still feel distinct. Give each of them its own leadership, its own slate, its own voice and the freedom to compete. Two great studios fighting for the same awards and the same opening weekends are better for this industry than one giant studio wearing two costumes.
Please keep the logos where they belong. Of all the small decisions ahead, this is one audiences will actually see. The mountain and the shield should open their films. If Skydance needs a card before them, keep it brief.
Please keep your promises to theaters. Your settlement with the states commits the company to at least 30 theatrical releases in its first two years, more after that, and a 45-day window for wide releases. Those are floors, not ceilings. The healthiest version of this company is one that treats the big screen as the main event, not a marketing stop on the way to HBO Max and Paramount+.
And please take care of the libraries. Warner Bros. alone holds more than 12,500 feature films. Paramount’s archive is smaller but just as precious. These films are not content to be cycled through a streaming menu and forgotten. Restore them, release them, put them back in theaters for anniversaries, and give the next generation of moviegoers a reason to fall in love with them.
None of this is a criticism of your ambition. You took real risks to get here, and you have said you want to make more movies, not fewer. We want that too. But the name at the top of the org chart matters less than what happens underneath it. If Paramount and Warner Bros. are still recognizably themselves in 10 years, nobody will remember being upset about Skydance. If they are not, nobody will remember anything else.
You have already won the deal. Now win the trust. Keep the mountain and the shield shining, and let Skydance earn its century the way they did, one great movie at a time.
Sincerely,
The Cinema Group
