David Ellison

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Skydance CEO David Ellison led the 2025 merger with Paramount Global and the 2026 acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.

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David Ellison is an American film producer and media executive who founded Skydance Media, the studio behind some of the most commercially successful films of the early 21st century. After establishing Skydance in 2010, he produced the Mission: Impossible and Star Trek series of movies as well as the acclaimed Top Gun: Maverick (2022). Ellison later oversaw the company’s expansion into television, animation, and interactive entertainment and led its 2025 merger with Paramount Global. In October 2026, he completed the $81 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery and leads the newly renamed Skydance Corporation (SKYD) as chief executive officer and chair.

David Ferris Ellison was born January 9, 1983, in Santa Clara County, California. He is the elder of two children of Barbara Boothe and Larry Ellison, cofounder of Oracle Corporation (ORCL) and one of the world’s wealthiest corporate executives. His parents divorced soon after his sister Megan was born, and the two children were raised primarily by their mother on a horse farm in Woodside, a community south of San Francisco.

Boothe emphasized routine and responsibility, assigning chores and giving each child a $5 weekly allowance. The household revolved as much around movies as around work. The family kept an extensive library of VHS tapes—more than 3,000 by Ellison’s recollection—and the three of them spent many evenings watching their favorite films together. As their father’s wealth increased over the years, the children became increasingly aware of it, noticing that the homes he lived in grew progressively larger.

Ellison attended Sacred Heart Schools in Atherton, where he gradually became aware of his family’s public profile. By his teenage years he had developed strong interests in both aviation and filmmaking. At age 13, he began taking aerobatic flying lessons, later joined by his father, and on his 16th birthday he piloted an Extra 300 aerobatic airplane. He also worked two summers at Oracle, helping to build websites, which confirmed his preference for the creative side of storytelling over software.

After graduating in 2001, Ellison enrolled at Pepperdine University as a business major but found the field unappealing. He transferred to the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts to focus on film and television production.

In 2006, during what would have been his senior year, he left the program to help finance and costar in the World War I film Flyboys (2006), an experience that redirected his focus to producing full time.

Although Flyboys was a flop—costing about $60 million to make and earning roughly $13 million at the box office—Ellison’s role in financing the film prompted him to begin forming Skydance Productions that same year. The process exposed him to the financial side of filmmaking and convinced him that he wanted to build a company focused on large-scale studio projects.

In 2010, he formally launched Skydance after securing $350 million in financing composed of debt and equity, including a revolving credit line from JPMorgan Chase (JPM). The infusion of capital allowed the start-up to partner with major studios on big-budget films at a time when franchise films were becoming increasingly important in Hollywood. Skydance Productions later became Skydance Media as the company expanded production into other types of media.

Later that year, Skydance signed a five-year cofinancing and distribution agreement with Paramount Pictures, giving it an opportunity to join projects already in Paramount’s pipeline. Skydance’s first such collaboration was True Grit (2010), a remake of the 1969 western directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, known for Fargo and No Country for Old Men. Executive produced by Ellison, the film received 10 Academy Award nominations and grossed more than $250 million worldwide on a budget of less than $40 million.

Skydance’s second feature for Paramount, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (2011), was also executive produced by Ellison and earned nearly $695 million worldwide. The success of these films helped establish Skydance as a significant Hollywood producer.

Beginning in the mid-2010s under Ellison’s leadership, Skydance broadened its work beyond feature films by moving into television production. The company’s first major TV success was Grace and Frankie (2015–2022), a Netflix (NFLX) comedy about two women whose husbands have been secretly romantically involved for years. Executive produced by Ellison and starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, the series earned multiple Primetime Emmy Award nominations over its seven-season run.

Skydance followed with Jack Ryan (2018–2023), an action thriller streamed on Amazon.com’s Prime Video and based on the Tom Clancy character of the same name. Ellison also executive produced Reacher (2022– ), adapted from Lee Child’s novels about former military police officer Jack Reacher, and Cross (2024– ), drawn from James Patterson’s detective series. These projects established Skydance as a producer of high-profile scripted television.

Ellison further grew the company by creating animation and interactive entertainment divisions. The animation unit developed a range of animated films and series, while the interactive division focused on video games and other digital projects.

As Skydance became more established within the studio system, Ellison expanded the company’s involvement in major action and science fiction franchises. He executive produced Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) and later worked on Terminator Genisys (2015), a planned revival of the Terminator series. He also continued his association with the Mission: Impossible franchise, executive producing Rogue Nation (2015), Fallout (2018), Dead Reckoning (2023), and The Final Reckoning (2025).

One of Ellison’s most notable projects was Top Gun: Maverick (2022), a sequel to the 1986 Top Gun film starring Tom Cruise. A critical and commercial success, it became one of Skydance’s most widely recognized releases and received six Academy Award nominations, winning one.

In mid-2024, Skydance reached an agreement to merge with Paramount Global in an $8 billion all-stock deal. The transaction brought together Skydance’s divisions in film, television, animation, and interactive entertainment with Paramount’s extensive holdings, including CBS, Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon, and MTV. At the time of the agreement, Paramount was contending with leadership turnover, declining cable revenues, and ongoing losses in its streaming business.

Federal regulators approved the merger in July 2025 after Skydance agreed to a series of concessions, including the phaseout of Paramount’s diversity and inclusion programs and changes to editorial policies. Days before the approval, Paramount settled a $16 million lawsuit with President Donald Trump related to a 2024 60 Minutes interview, prompting some observers to question whether political pressure had influenced the approval process.

Following the merger, Ellison became CEO and chair of the newly formed Paramount Skydance Corporation, with Jeff Shell serving as president. Skydance assumed day-to-day operational control, while Paramount’s legacy assets remained central to the company’s business.

In December 2025, Ellison launched a $77.9 billion hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, days after the company had agreed to a competing offer from Netflix. Paramount’s bid went directly to Warner shareholders and sought to acquire all of Warner’s businesses, including cable networks such as CNN and Discovery, which Netflix had excluded from its proposal.

On December 17, Warner’s board of directors rejected the offer, calling it “illusory” and raising concerns about the credibility of the equity being offered and the structure of the Ellison family’s financial backing. In a letter to shareholders, Warner said Paramount had “consistently misled” investors and reaffirmed that the Netflix agreement was financially and strategically superior. Paramount responded that its proposal wasn’t its “best and final” offer.

In February 2026, Paramount raised its bid to $31 a share and added terms intended to increase deal certainty, including a $7 billion regulatory termination fee and an accelerated “ticking fee” of 25 cents a share per quarter if the transaction failed to close by late September 2026. Warner’s board determined that the revised proposal constituted a superior offer under its merger agreement with Netflix.

On February 26, 2026, Netflix declined to match Paramount’s higher bid, saying that the increased price was no longer financially attractive. Warner subsequently moved forward with Paramount’s offer. In April 2026, Warner shareholders approved Paramount’s $31-a-share acquisition of the company, valuing the deal at about $81 billion, or roughly $111 billion including debt.

The acquisition subsequently faced an antitrust lawsuit from 12 states. In September 2026, Paramount reached an agreement with the states to resolve the lawsuit, which was subsequently approved by a federal judge. On October 6, Paramount completed the $81 billion acquisition, making Warner a wholly owned subsidiary of the newly renamed Skydance Corporation.

Ellison’s appointment as CEO and chair of Paramount Skydance marked a rare generational shift in Hollywood leadership. A year later, the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery placed him at the head of Skydance Corporation, with holdings that include Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., CBS, CNN, HBO, Paramount+, and HBO Max.

The acquisitions capped two decades of expansion at Skydance, which Ellison grew from a small film-production venture into one of the largest media companies in the United States. He took charge of the combined company as the entertainment industry continued to adjust to shifting audience habits and the changing economics of streaming.