Skydance Corporation completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday, October 6, and the same morning its new leaders warned employees that the integration will affect jobs. In a staff memo obtained by Variety, chairman and CEO David Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz wrote that “integrating two companies will bring change, including difficult decisions that affect our workforce,” adding, “We are committed to handling this process thoughtfully and respectfully.”
Skydance has not put a number or a timeline on those decisions. Variety reports the company has not revealed the extent of the job cuts it expects, and Deadline reports that Ellison and Kreiz declined to offer projections or percentages when CNN’s Anderson Cooper pressed them at a town hall on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank. “There will be changes, and there will be impacts. I’m not going to pretend otherwise,” Ellison told staff there, according to Deadline.
The deal, by the numbers
The combined company is named Skydance, and its Class B shares began trading Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SKYD, according to the company’s closing announcement. WBD shareholders receive $31.01666668 per share in cash, and WBD stock has stopped trading on Nasdaq.
Two very different dollar figures are attached to the deal. Warner Bros. Discovery’s Form 8-K filing with the SEC puts the aggregate merger consideration, the price Skydance is paying for WBD’s shares, at approximately $78 billion, funded with a mix of equity and debt financing. The $111 billion figure in coverage from GameSpot and Variety is closer to the deal’s enterprise value, a broader measure that counts debt. When Paramount announced the deal in February, it put WBD’s enterprise value at $110 billion.
Skydance says it is targeting at least $6 billion in run-rate synergies within three years, with savings coming primarily from “technology, integration and procurement, marketing and real estate rationalization.” Matthew Belloni, in his What I’m Hearing newsletter as quoted by ComicsBeat, describes the new company as carrying some $79 billion in net debt, citing Skydance’s own numbers.
What Skydance now owns in games
As GameSpot pointed out, the closing release never mentions video games. The staff memo does: under its storytelling priority, Ellison and Kreiz wrote, “In games, it means worlds like Hogwarts Legacy and Mortal Kombat.” Per GameSpot, Skydance now controls Warner Bros. Games, including:
- Avalanche Software, the Hogwarts Legacy studio, and its publishing label Portkey Games
- NetherRealm Studios and the Mortal Kombat series
- Rocksteady Studios, the Batman: Arkham developer
- TT Games, the LEGO games developer
- WB Games Boston, WB Games Montreal, WB Games New York, and WB Games San Francisco, among other studios
Kreiz did mention games when speaking to staff. According to The Hollywood Reporter, as cited by GameSpot, he said the company will have “plenty of opportunities to develop new businesses, products, games, and experiences to engage fans wherever they are and be where the consumer is going.” GameSpot says it has asked Skydance for more detail on its games plans.
Skydance already had a games arm before the close. GameSpot reports that Paramount Games Studio, which folded in Skydance Interactive and Skydance New Media, continues its projects, including Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra and Amy Hennig’s Star Wars game with Lucasfilm. GameSpot also notes Skydance is making a Call of Duty movie with Activision, due in 2028.
DC Studios and DC Comics
On the DC side, ComicsBeat, citing The Hollywood Reporter, reports that DC Studios co-heads James Gunn and Peter Safran will report directly to Ellison and Kreiz. THR’s sources say the pair met with Ellison in person last Thursday and were asked to stay and “keep doing what you’re doing.” Under Warner Bros. Discovery, the two reported directly to David Zaslav, who left the company Tuesday, according to the 8-K. ComicsBeat notes that Gunn and Safran’s contract runs out in 2027.
DC also appears by name in the memo’s list of film franchises, alongside Harry Potter, Mission: Impossible, and Star Trek. On the publishing side, ComicsBeat quotes THR’s Borys Kit calling DC’s prominent spot in Skydance’s launch graphic good news for DC Comics, which he says has overtaken Marvel in sales and market share for the first time in decades, thanks to the Absolute Universe imprint and a focus on rebuilding creator relationships. That run includes five Absolute Batman issues in 2026’s top 10 so far. ComicsBeat adds that who DC Comics now reports to has not been stated publicly.
Neither the closing release nor the memo says how the coming workforce decisions will affect Warner Bros. Games, DC Studios, or DC Comics.
