Another billionaire thinks he can fix Warner Bros.

Summary · 2 min read instead of 43 min

Peter Kafka is chief correspondent at Business Insider and hosts Channels, a media podcast in the Vox Media Podcast Network. He recently profiled new Skydance co-CEO Ynon Kreiz for Business Insider and has covered Kreiz since his Maker Studios days.

Kafka argues that David Ellison's Skydance, which now owns Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, has announced cost savings but no plan for new revenue, while carrying $80 billion in debt that will drive most decisions. He says regulators, including California, gave Ellison what he wanted, so math and bondholders, not rules like the 30-films-a-year pledge, will constrain the company. Kafka and Nilay Patel see AI and social media, both areas where the Ellison family holds big investments through Oracle, OpenAI ties and TikTok, as the main threats to the media business Skydance bought. Kafka describes Ynon Kreiz's role as the cost cutter who lets Ellison stay friendly with talent. He rejects Patel's theory that Netflix bid up the price to buy Warner's assets cheaply later.

Minute by minute

1. 2:13

   Skydance will merge the brands over time. The combined Paramount and Warner Bros. company is now called Skydance. Kafka says consumers will keep seeing Paramount, Warner Bros. and HBO in the near term, partly because cable TV rules limit changes. He expects one mega streaming service and one movie studio eventually, all run by David Ellison.

2. 4:16

   Cost cuts but no growth plan. Kafka says Ellison can try because his father is the eighth richest man in the world and the family controls the company, and at 43 he has a long runway. He notes there is no announced plan for new revenue, only a promise to save $6 billion over three years, much of it likely from layoffs at companies that already cut repeatedly.

3. 6:10

   Debt sank the previous owners. Kafka says the deal carries $80 billion in debt, and that David Zaslav sold because he could not manage the 43 or 50 billion dollars he took on. Wall Street had given up, with the stock around seven dollars. He says AT&T bought Warner hoping to be valued like Netflix and exited within a couple of years; Patel recalls the court calling it "a vision deal".

4. 10:33

   AI floods the market for attention. Patel describes AI videos remixing Warner characters on Instagram and argues OpenAI's success would come from IP theft that makes Warner less valuable. Kafka says the bigger issue is attention: anyone can now make content that competes with expensive movies. He offers the counterexample of music, where Spotify sold people $120 of music a year after years of piracy.

5. 18:08

   Kreiz is the designated cost cutter. Kafka traces Ynon Kreiz from Endemol and Haim Saban to Maker Studios, sold to Disney, and Mattel, where he put together the Barbie movie and cut 22% of the workforce. He says Kreiz is effectively COO despite the co-CEO title and will be paid $50 million this year. In his view, Kreiz lets Ellison tell angry talent his hands are tied.

Published Oct 10, 2026.