{"id":2321462,"date":"2026-03-10T14:14:38","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T14:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2321462"},"modified":"2026-03-10T14:14:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T14:14:38","slug":"paramount-may-have-landed-warner-bros-now-comes-the-baggage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/paramount-may-have-landed-warner-bros-now-comes-the-baggage\/","title":{"rendered":"Paramount may have landed Warner Bros., now comes the baggage"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It took months of effort, lobbying and mounds of cash for Paramount Skydance to finally clinch its prize of Warner Bros. Discovery.<\/p>\n

Now, however, the David Ellison-led company faces a long and challenging road to merge these two media giants and set it up for a successful future.<\/p>\n

Key to that will be striking a delicate balancing act between investment and paying down its debt load of $79 billion, which is massive even by Hollywood standards.<\/p>\n

Notably, the figure is even greater than Warner\u2019s nearly $55 billion of debt post-merger with Discovery, a burden that hamstrung the company for years and led to successive rounds of layoffs and relentless cost cutting.<\/p>\n

Last week, my colleague Meg James wrote about the concerns Fitch Ratings and S&P Global Ratings have about Paramount\u2019s credit<\/a>, given the mountain of debt the company will now carry. Fitch downgraded its credit to BB+ \u2014 \u201cjunk\u201d territory \u2014 from BBB-, and S&P Global Ratings placed the company\u2019s ratings on \u201cnegative watch.\u201d <\/p>\n

Carrying that amount of debt comes with significant risks.<\/p>\n

For one, a company with a lot of debt that is \u201cjunk\u201d-rated is going to be under pressure to cut costs. \u201cJunk status\u201d means a company\u2019s debt is rated below the level that credit agencies consider investment grade. Such a rating means it can be more expensive to refinance or take out new loans, raising the cost of capital.<\/p>\n

Paramount executives have already said they plan to find $6 billion in \u201csynergies\u201d within three years, though they\u2019ve emphasized that the majority of their cost cutting will come from \u201cnon-labor sources,\u201d including consolidating their streaming technology and cloud providers, combining IT systems across the company and \u201coptimizing the combined real estate footprint and the broader corporate overhead,\u201d among other ideas.<\/p>\n

And as I wrote last week<\/a>, most Hollywood observers and those familiar with Ellison\u2019s plans predict that Paramount will be forced make steep layoffs to offset the cost of the deal and eliminate overlapping roles and functions between the two historic studios.<\/p>\n

At the same time, in order to compete with well-funded rivals, Paramount-Warner Bros. will also need to invest in new programming \u2014 something that can be difficult for a heavily leveraged business .<\/p>\n

Paramount executives have said their cost-cutting efforts won\u2019t include a reduction in production capacity, and Ellison has reiterated that there will be continued spending on programming. Beyond content, he\u2019ll also likely need to invest in improving the technology along with the look and feel of the streaming platforms.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhether or not they have the capital to do all of that and to try to get their leverage down is something I\u2019m curious to hear about,\u201d said Naveen Sarma of S&P Global Ratings.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible that Paramount may not be able to pursue a good opportunity in the future because it has used up all its debt capacity and can\u2019t raise additional financing, said Kelly Shue, a professor of finance at Yale School of Management.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt might cause them to underinvest in good projects in the future,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

And the company needs to spend on good projects.<\/p>\n

The economics of this deal hinge on the combined heft of Paramount and Warner\u2019s two libraries and valuable intellectual property, which will unite Harry Potter, DC Studios, SpongeBob SquarePants and \u201cMission Impossible\u201d all under one roof. <\/p>\n

Building up its streaming platform, which will combine Paramount+ with HBO Max<\/a>, is important for competing with the behemoth Netflix, which bowed out of the Warner Bros. auction<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And on the theatrical side, Ellison has said the combined company will release 30 films a year \u2014 15 from each studio. That would be a substantial increase from 2025, when the two companies released 18 films \u2014 eight at Paramount and 10 from Warner Bros.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile studios content budgets might not come under immediate focus for cost cutting, we have a hard time seeing no content costs savings considering opportunities to reallocate or pull back from at least the linear networks,\u201d MoffettNathanson\u2019s Robert Fishman wrote in a note to clients last week.<\/p>\n

Of course, all of this would come only after the deal\u2019s completion. On the immediate horizon, Paramount needs to secure international regulatory approval as well as at home. Although state attorneys general including Rob Bonta of California have said this is not a \u201cdone deal,\u201d most analysts expect that any opposition there is only likely to slow \u2014 not stop \u2014 the transaction.<\/p>\n

A very masculine year in film<\/h2>\n

A recent study from San Diego State University put a number on something we all suspected: The percentage of female protagonists in the top 100 films last year dropped. A lot. <\/p>\n

Female protagonists made up just 29% of the top-grossing films in 2025, down from 42% in 2024, according to the university\u2019s annual study of women\u2019s representation in top films. A selection of film titles from the last year says it all: \u201cThe Running Man,\u201d \u201cA Working Man,\u201d \u201cSuperman.\u201d<\/p>\n

That 29% figure has, unfortunately, been very consistent over the years \u2014 it was the same in 2016 and has largely hovered in the range of high 20s to low 30s for the last decade, with a few exceptions (40% in 2019 and 42% in 2024).<\/p>\n

Focusing on just the protagonists in the top 100 films means that small fluctuations can change that percentage greatly.<\/p>\n

But when the study looked at a broader sample size of the more than 1,900 characters in those films, the results weren\u2019t much better.<\/p>\n

The percentage of women in speaking roles was 38%, up just 1% from 2024. And the percentage of major female characters declined to 36% in 2025 from 39% the year before.<\/p>\n

The fact that these figures have not moved much, in spite of the countless panels and think pieces about the issue, suggests there isn\u2019t much will in Hollywood to change, said Martha Lauzen, author of the study and founder and executive director of San Diego State\u2019s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film.<\/p>\n

\u201cRepresentation is social relevancy and social capital,\u201d she told me. \u201cSo when you see fewer women than men, that\u2019s a message.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stuff We Wrote<\/h2>\n

Film shoots<\/h2>\n
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