Visiting the executive bungalow on the Paramount lot in 2014 or 2015 was like stepping into the last days of the Roman Empire. I remember a source meeting with Philippe Dauman, the unimpressive lawyer-turned-C.E.O. of its parent company, Viacom. As he bounced between generic cable TV ratings boasts and “content is king” platitudes, all I could think was: This guy makes $50 million a year?

Dauman, one of the all-time looters of corporate America, had taken hundreds of millions of dollars out of Viacom and failed to position the company for anything other than its next earnings report. The stock lagged, bad behavior proliferated, and there was zero strategy to transition once-dominant networks like MTV and Nickelodeon for the streaming age. Paramount, home of The Godfather and Forrest Gump and era-defining executives like Barry Diller and Sherry Lansing, had lost Marvel to Disney and failed to invest in strong I.P. Brad Grey, its studio chief, often went A.W.O.L., managing the place quarter-by-quarter and sometimes shifting movies to less desirable release dates to avoid marketing charges and pad his personal bonus. All while Sumner Redstone, the company’s nonagenarian owner, sat ensconced in declining health in his Beverly Park mansion surrounded by two young girlfriends, monitoring the stock price of Viacom and CBS and occasionally swimming nude in his pool.