Following David Ellison’s announcement that his combined Paramount-Warner Bros. would be called Skydance, many Internet users on social networks are making variations on the same comment: “Ellison just killed the legacy of Warner Bros. and Paramount in one fell swoop,” lamented one of them. New York Post. “The Skydance is so weak.”
Ellison reassured that the 103-year-old Warner Bros. brand and the 114-year-old Paramount brand would remain. “We will honor what makes Paramount and Warner Bros. special: giving both studios the opportunity to grow, tell more great stories, and bring those stories to an even wider audience around the world, thanks to the scale and capabilities of Skydance,” he wrote in a statement Friday announcing the rebranding.
Ellison revealed a logo menu that had Skydance front and center and large, around tiny icons for brands like Warners and Paramount (along with CBS, HBO Max, DC, CNN and, perhaps just to balance the graphic, Nickelodeon).
It is unclear to what extent the Paramount and Warner Bros. will mean in the future. The optimistic example of the parent studio would be something like Comcast owning Universal – the public still sees Universal as its own thing. The pessimistic version is that Disney bought 20th Century Fox – it kept the studio but abandoned “Fox” and the label’s output declined. Early signs, including Ellison’s leadership shakeups, suggest a merged studio here as well. “Paramount” and “Warner Bros.” could remain strong entities…or could morph into names used primarily for the movies and shows they’re stamped after rather than actual businesses.
Still, the naming decision seemed rather selfish, didn’t it? You buy one iconic company, then a second iconic company, then you slap your 20-year-old production company banner on top of both. It’s not quite a Trumpian move — Ellison could have called the ELLISON Company, then sat back and laughed at Mark Ruffalo’s angry tweets — but it’s certainly the kind that says, “Hey, I won.” »
And as the company names say, Skydance isn’t great.
I know. This morning’s decision is to hate it. But Skydance is not like… Comcast. Or Max. Or Tubi. Or Peacock. Or AMC Networks (relationship with AMC theaters? None at all!). It’s terrible.
Skydance looks a lot like what it is: a production company from around 2006 that also vaguely resembles Silicon Valley. We can imagine a Skydance Corp. making fintech products, data centers or dating apps. As such, it also feels very 21st century, which, arguably, goes into the brand’s plus column.
And it doesn’t carry a fraction of the weight, gravitas, legacy, or brand recognition of the studios it actually overtook.
Warner Bros. has the most value for consumers. The studio has 12,500 feature films and 2,400 TV programs. The name is so beloved that it has survived countless mergers and acquisitions (see Erik Hayden’s excellent history of the Warner Bros. and Paramount names).
Yet the name is also a relic: the legacy of Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack, the last of whom died almost 50 years ago. It’s understandable that Ellison wouldn’t want to name the parent company after certain studio bosses from the 1940s.
The Paramount Library is considerably smaller, but its name was still known. The merged company could have kept Paramount at the top. The name doesn’t seem particularly dated. So while the name Skydance is a surprise, the surprise is that Ellison didn’t stay loyal to Paramount like Shari Redstone did when she merged CBS with her father’s company Viacom (now There is a bad reputation – Viacom looks like a villainous corporation from a Paul Verhoeven film from the 1980s).
Making a monster combo like “Paramount Skydance Warner Bros. Discovery” would have been terrible – a name only a lawyer could love and a constant reminder of the ghost of mergers past.
Starting Tuesday, this will all become official on Wall Street when PSKY switches to SKYD on the ticker.
There is a line of Raiders of the Lost Ark – which opens with Paramount Mountain transforming into a similar-looking peak in South America – where the villain tells Indiana Jones that when you bury a trinket in the sand and enough years pass, it becomes priceless. So who knows. Perhaps with another 100 years of experience, Skydance will be a name that will be worth to entertainment fans what Warner Bros. is worth. and Paramount today. It’s just a long time to wait.
Gn entert
