Skydance — the new behemoth brand in Hollywood following a mammoth $110 billion (£83 billion) takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount Studios — has outlined its plans to challenge Netflix.
The massive merger, which completed earlier this week, brings together two of the world’s biggest studios, as well as streaming services HBO Max and Paramount+, US television networks including CBS and MTV, and popular franchises like Harry Potter, Top Gun, and The Godfather. In the UK, Skydance controls Channel 5 and TNT Sports.
It’s taken eight months for the deal to finalise. Paramount agreed to buy Warner Bros Discovery back in February after it triumphed over Netflix in a lengthy bidding battle for the legendary Hollywood studio founded in 1923.
Details remain sparse, but Skydance has confirmed that its streaming services — Paramount+, discovery+, and HBO Max – will begin to “unify into a single service over time”. Plans to combine these three standalone services into a single streamer have been on the table for a while.
Skydance CEO David Ellison first outlined his ambition to Paramount+ and HBO Max into a single entity back in March. Mr Ellison says it will give the company “a little over 200 million direct-to-consumer subscribers.”
For comparison, Netflix crossed 325 million paid subscribers last year, up from 300 million reported in late 2024.
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HBO Max launched in the UK back in March, completing an ambitious European roll-out that started in late 2021. For the last 15 years, Sky Atlantic — an exclusive television channel only available via NOW or Sky TV subscriptions — has been the only place in the UK to watch the biggest shows from US network HBO, including The Last of Us, Euphoria, The White Lotus, Succession, House of the Dragon, Big Little Lies, The Sopranos, and many more.
With the arrival of HBO Max on British shores, that exclusivity finally ends.
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Award-winning shows like Game of Thrones, True Detective, Band of Brothers, and The Wire can all be streamed with a cancel-anytime subscription to HBO Max, starting from just £5.99 per month. HBO Max is now included with Sky TV at no extra cost alongside Disney+ and Netflix.
David Ellison stressed that HBO would continue to “operate with independence” after the merger. The media mogul has elevated HBO CEO Casey Bloys to Skydance Co-Chair and Chief Content Officer and revealed that he’ll be responsible for “original programming as well as strategy, operations, communications and performance across the company’s streaming platforms.”
That seems like a clear signal that Mr Bloy’s work at HBO, which included hits such as Succession, The White Lotus, and the Emmy-winning drama series The Pitt, is recognised by the new team.
Of course, this new sandbox is bigger than anything Casey Bloys has played with before. As well as keeping a steady stream of award-winners and must-binge boxsets coming from HBO, he’ll need to steer the streaming portfolio of Paramount+, which includes franchises like Star Trek and Dexter, and a universe of shows from Taylor Sheridan.
As for David Ellison, he will lead the new £83bn company alongside his new co-chief executive, Ynon Kreiz. Mr Ellison said: “From the start, our ambition was to bring these two storied studios together and create a stronger competitor, with the talent, resources, and reach to tell great stories in every genre, on every platform, for audiences everywhere. Now that ambition is a reality.”
Skydance hasn’t confirmed the brand name of its new unified streaming service. It’s possible that one of its existing brands — Paramount+ or HBO Max — will simply subsume the other. TNT Sports and other content that was previously exclusive to discovery+ is already baked into HBO Max, a trend that could just continue.
We’re also in the dark about the cost of this new service. However, Skydance has taken on an almost unprecedented level of debt— some $80 billion (£60bn) chunk — as part of the acquisition and has three years to hit specific targets laid out in its agreements with lenders to reduce its overall leverage ratio. If the company fails, Larry Ellison — the software billionaire and the father of Skydance CEO — will need to make up the difference from his personal wealth.
As such, it seems unlikely a one-stop-shop streamer that combines Paramount+ (from £5.99), HBO Max (from £5.99), and discovery+ (from £3.99) will be a bargain. Subscribing separately for the entry-level plans of each of these streamers — which don’t include the latest Hollywood releases, ad-free or offline viewing, or the best available picture quality — would cost £15.97 alone. For the top-tier plans, that rises to £62.96 each month.
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