A Bold Era in Hollywood Ends With a Whimper

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To kick off this newsletter, I sent out a message declaring that movies were “ undeniably back .” Within days, it seemed that the sky was falling again.

Two venerable studios, Paramount and Warner Bros.

Discovery, officially merged on October 6, further consolidating power in Hollywood into just a few conglomerates.

The new entity has been dubbed Skydance, the name of the original production company that CEO David Ellison founded in 2006.

Not much has outwardly changed thus far, new moniker aside.

But internally, Ellison has already made at least one concerning decision.

Once the deal closed, two key leaders at Warner Bros., the bolder and more risk-taking of the two studios, were immediately shown the door: Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, the co-chairs of Warner Bros.

Motion Picture Group.

Their departure suggested what many industry analysts had feared: that their new boss was no longer a fan of taking big, bold risks.

After all, the news that De Luca and Abdy were exiting the company —to be replaced by Paramount’s current team, which will oversee what has been referred to as the “Paramount Warner Bros.

Motion Picture unit” (try saying that three times fast)—arrived right before a historically bad weekend for the studio.

The Tom Cruise project Digger opened on October 2 to only $8 million domestically, on a budget that reportedly climbed as high as $180 million; that’s an especially anemic number given Cruise’s involvement as both star and co-producer.

Digger now stands as Warner Bros.’ final release before it joined Skydance, and the movie’s catastrophic box-office performance is the latest in a series of tough beats for the company this year.