Paramount Completes Takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, Forming a Combined Company Called Skydance

Paramount Skydance has closed its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, creating a combined company called Skydance, according to the Associated Press and Al Jazeera. The deal closed on Tuesday 6 October 2026.

The Associated Press described it as an $81 billion takeover and said that, including billions of dollars in debt, the Warner acquisition amounts to nearly $111 billion. Al Jazeera put the merger at $110 billion, so the two outlets give different headline values. The AP said Paramount eventually raised its offer to buy all of Warner for $31 per share. According to the AP, the combined company is under the helm of David Ellison and his new co-chief executive, Ynon Kreiz.

News Brands Under One Roof

Al Jazeera reported that the newly combined company began trading on Wall Street on Tuesday and that the deal brings two of the United States’ most influential news brands, CNN and CBS News, under one roof. It said Mark Thompson will stay on as CNN’s editor-in-chief, while Bari Weiss will remain editor-in-chief at CBS News. According to Al Jazeera, the combined company will carry $80 billion in debt.

The road to the merger, Al Jazeera said, included lawsuits from unions and 12 state attorneys general. The AP reported that the states’ terms, eventually approved by a judge, include pledges from the company to increase film production in the United States over the next five years, to commit millions of dollars to a fund supporting workers displaced by the merger, and to establish new editorial monitoring of CNN and CBS. Al Jazeera added that Skydance has 180 days to put that arrangement together.

Seth Stern, quoted by Al Jazeera, was sceptical of the arrangement. “It doesn’t take effect for 180 days,” he said. “The newsroom can be totally overhauled in 180 days.”

Why It Matters

The completion ends a contested takeover and starts a period in which the new owner’s commitments will be tested. For journalism, the central question is how the promised editorial monitoring is designed and whether it satisfies critics such as Stern. The next six months will show how much of what was pledged to the states becomes practice.