There’s a lot for Skydance co-CEOs David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz to be proud of in their purchase of Warner Bros.
As Ellison said Monday during Skydance’s Q3 earnings call, “We have approximately $40 billion [in film] franchises which I think highly strengthen the overall portfolio,” and that “a new movie will arrive on our service every other week; film is a major driver of acquisition and engagement on our platforms.”
Despite potential plusses from the merger, Ellison and Kreiz also drew attention to the losses in store from Warner Bros’ 2026 film slate.
More specifically, Ellison wasn’t shy in acknowledging that Paramount is in better financial waters going forward than Warner Bros on the feature side. Today’s earnings didn’t include the consolidated Warner Bros figures since the merger closed during Q4, just five weeks ago; still, Paramount brass painted a less-than-rosy picture of what’s around the corner.
Said Ellison at the call’s onset, “The 2026 Paramount film slate is expected to generate $500 million more in lifetime profits than last year’s. We’ve now taken on another company with mixed results across the business…”
He added, “We do have some headwinds particularly in studios where Warner Bros film has underperformed this year and will weigh on Q4 results. We’ll apply the same playbook we did at Paramount: greenlighting more selectively, prioritizing profitable streaming growth over subscriber count, optimizing linear and driving efficiency through the cost structure.”
“We’ve proven it works, and we’re confident it will work again,” Ellison said, as the company is still looking at $6 billion synergies from the merger.
Kreiz mentioned at the top of the call about the merger, “What I’ve seen, the various parts of the company are in strong shape. The Warner Bros. Discovery team did a good job managing their business and delivered the expected result through the close, with the one area of softness in the movie studio, and we are looking to build on their good work.”
He added, “We do have some headwinds particularly in studios where Warner Bros film has underperformed this year and will weigh on Q4 results. We’ll apply the same playbook we did at Paramount: greenlighting more selectively, prioritizing profitable streaming growth over subscriber count, optimizing linear and driving efficiency through the cost structure.”
“We’ve proven it works, and we’re confident it will work again,” Ellison said, as the company is still looking at $6 billion synergies from the merger.
Kreiz mentioned at the top of the call about the merger, “What I’ve seen, the various parts of the company are in strong shape. The Warner Bros. Discovery team did a good job managing their business and delivered the expected result through the close, with the one area of softness in the movie studio, and we are looking to build on their good work.”
The $200M headwind is essentially Digger, more or less.
There was a report out there that Warner Bros’ 2026 slate was bound to lose $800M for the full year; we know from sources that is false. Even with the expected blockbuster success of Legendary’s upcoming Dune: Part Three, the WB slate is estimated to lose around $400M, per sources.
It hasn’t been a great year at the box office for Warner Bros, with global box office misfires such as Supergirl, The Bride, Digger and no film grossing more than $100M domestic. However, the Burbank lot is slightly ahead of Paramount at the domestic box office year to date, from January 1-November 9: $569M (-70% vs. same frame in 2025) to $537M (+15% vs. ’25). Combined, the two studios count $1.1 billion at the domestic box office YTD, ranking behind Universal ($1.9B), Disney ($1.6B) and Sony ($1.4B). Paramount’s high points have been Scream 7 ($121.9M domestic) and Scary Movie ($108.2M).
In a further sign to Wall Street that it is cutting fat, Skydance today announced the departures of prolific filmmakers James Gunn and Peter Safran as DC Studios’ heads. They are being replaced by early-2000s Marvel exec Jeremy Latcham, who departed the Disney-owned studio in 2017 before the explosion of Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.
Ellison wasn’t all poo-poo on Warner Bros today. He gave props to New Line’s upcoming 2027 Christmas event title Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum calling the movie, “a compelling theatrical offering.”
