Hollywood’s Hero of the Year… Is Bailing on Hollywood

In a year when thousands were fired or fled the ever-contracting entertainment business, Paramount owner Shari Redstone finally recognized she couldn’t compete and shrewdly sold the company to a Silicon Valley heir with the means to save the studio, not consolidate it out of existence.

That informal covenant—one of many, many odd aspects of the Paramount/Skydance transaction that unfolded through most of a tumultuous 2024—was more appealing to Redstone than might be expected. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images

Matthew Belloni

December 31, 2024

The wildest aspect of the wildest deal of 2024 has to be the handshake agreement between Shari Redstone, the owner of Paramount Global, and David Ellison, the Oracle heir who searched his father’s couch cushions for most of the $8 billion he spent to buy it from her. Ellison, as I reported more than a year ago now, promised from the onset of talks that he wouldn’t turn around and flip the storied film and television company to another bidder. Yes, he will likely cleave off some lesser assets—a dying cable network here, a streaming joint venture there, $2 billion in cost cuts planned overall—but that’s just triage.