Paramount-Warner Bros. Parent Company Will Be Named Skydance

For more than a century, Paramount and Warner Bros. have been two of Hollywood’s defining names. Now, the corporate entity bringing those storied studios together will drop both iconic monikers for a name first adopted two decades ago by a 23-year-old rich kid with a passion for flying.

David Ellison announced Friday that the company created by combining Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery will be called Skydance, the name he gave his production company at the beginning of his Hollywood career.

Ellison announced the name on X days before Paramount’s $111 billion acquisition of WBD is expected to close on October 6. The individual Paramount and Warner Bros. studio labels will survive, but the parent company of those businesses — along with HBO, CBS, Nickelodeon, CNN, DC Studios, and more — will be called Skydance.

What once was the peak, is now just the beginning.

Paramount and Warner Bros. shaped over a century of culture. By combining them, we aren’t rewriting history — we’re equipping these iconic studios with a more powerful engine. Together, we are Skydance: a creative-first home for… pic.twitter.com/uInLRY3IrE

— David Ellison (@ellisonskydance) October 2, 2026

“Paramount and Warner Bros. shaped over a century of culture,” Ellison wrote. “By combining them, we aren’t rewriting history — we’re equipping these iconic studios with a more powerful engine. Together, we are Skydance: a creative-first home for bold, quality storytelling.”

That’s a fairly impressive statement to make while replacing their corporate identities with the name of a much younger company and writing both names out of the Hollywood history still to be made.

Ellison explained that the company “never wanted a new corporate identity to diminish, alter or overshadow either one,” instead seeking a name that would allow Paramount and Warner Bros. “to remain in the spotlight.”

The symbolic takeover will be accompanied by a very real one. Puck reports that Warner Bros. film chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy are out, with Ellison expected to elevate Paramount film chiefs Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg to oversee both studios. The combined company is also targeting more than $6 billion in synergies, with Warner employees bracing for major layoffs.

The symbolism is difficult to miss. Paramount traces its history to 1912; Warner Bros. to 1923. Ellison began building what would become Skydance at just 23, paid for by his billionaire father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. The name came from David’s enthusiasm for aerobatic flying.

Paramount and Warner Bros. aren’t just corporate names. They are institutions that have endured for more than a century, through generations of filmmakers and studio workers who built careers there, and audiences who grew up recognizing those names at the beginning of movies and TV shows. They are inseparable from the history of Hollywood itself. There is something truly remarkable about acquiring both of them and deciding that the name sitting above more than 200 years of combined history should be the one their new boss picked at 23 based on his favorite hobby.

If nothing else, it’s a brazenly symbolic representation of who runs Hollywood now.