Paramount-WBD deal architect Gerry Cardinale says most of expected $6 billion in cost savings won’t be layoffs

Gerry Cardinale, a member of the Paramount board of directors and the principal architect of the company’s pending merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, insists that most of the cost savings from the deal will not come from layoffs.

The company promised investors it would achieve $6 billion in cost savings from the $110 billion deal, but Cardinale maintains non-labor costs will make up the majority. A Hollywood community already reeling from Covid, social unrest and overall consolidation and contraction assumed thousands of workers would be affected. Independent analyzes predict a similar outcome, and a review of past mergers shows they tend to leave many workers behind.

“The idea that $6 billion in cost synergies means you lay off all these people is just completely outdated,” Cardinale said during an appearance at the Bloomberg Screentime conference on Thursday. “If you look at what we have in front of us, most of these cost synergies are related to non-labor expenses. We’re going to unify the text stacks direct to consumer. We’ve already done it with Paramount+, Pluto and BET+. We’ve already done a heck of a job. Then we’ll do the same thing when we bring the HBO universe into it.”

The $110 billion merger is expected to be finalized on Tuesday, after a lengthy legal battle and a year of negotiations involving several suitors.

Real estate is another area of ​​focus in terms of cost reduction, Cardinale said. “We have real estate at Paramount, when we bought Paramount (in 2025) that the people at Paramount didn’t even know they owned,” he said. Plus, he continued, “there’s no enterprise resource planning system. You don’t even know what spending is happening across all divisions. We’re going to optimize how we spend marketing dollars. There’s so much we can do. And again, in any struggling industry, in any industry, you’re going to have a rationalization of labor costs, but that’s not what’s driving this.”

Cardinale was asked about CEO David Ellison and what has positioned him as one of Hollywood’s defining figures despite a fairly brief LinkedIn page in terms of running large companies.

“Look at him. He’s 43 years old and look at the talent he’s attracting,” the RedBird Capital founder said. “People are incredibly loyal to him. You can’t fake it. And let me tell you, there’s no last name in the world that offers that. Either you are or you’re not. And people want to work for him because he’s genuine.”

Cardinale also pushed back against the perception that Ellison got where he is solely through nepotism, given that his father, Larry Ellison, is one of the richest men in the world.

“Going back to the name, you know, he could be a total jerk. This guy is the most humble, nicest guy I’ve ever met,” Cardinale said. “He’s not interested in the glitz and glamor. He really cares about the industry. He cares about the people, both on the talent side and the content creator side, the people that he’s, you know, attracted to come here, um, and, you know, he’s going to do this for the rest of his professional career. And he’s young. And so I actually think he’s the future.”

Ellison as an individual “really motivated me to bet my business and my career” on the WBD merger, Cardinale said. “The only way Hollywood can move to this next phase and level the playing field with the guys up North is to become more of a technology company.”

Ben Affleck, who has been involved in several projects with RedBird, found “the right way for Hollywood to figure out how to level the playing field against the Silicon Valley guys” by founding an AI company. He then sold the company Interpositive to Netflix.

“The Silicon Valley guys. I have a lot of respect for them,” Cardinale added. “They think they’re the intellectual property in the equation. They’re the distribution. The intellectual property is the intellectual property in the equation. And what I’m trying to do, and in partnership with David and his passion, is level the playing field for the guys here.”