Ever since I found out Skydance was intending to acquire both Paramount and Warner Bros., I was fully against it from the beginning because, as I and many others have been repeating to death, that is way too many things for one corporation to own and it will inevitably lead to mass unemployment and mass consolidation on an antitrust-violating level. Now that the merger has officially been approved and it’s becoming less and less likely that it will be stopped by any legal challenges or interventions from the U.S. Government, I am now left with a bunch of obvious business-related questions regarding the practicality of all this.

Paramount and Warner Bros. are both colossal empires with long legacies in the entertainment industry and they both own TV networks, news organizations, film studios and streaming services. Forget about illegal – is this even realistic? No entertainment company with this many assets has ever existed under one owner before and no sane corporate leader would want to keep them all. Especially if they are in debt! Blue Sky Studios used to be Disney’s rival, and Disney basically used their acquisition of the 20th Century Fox film library to destroy them. There’s no reason to think something similar to this won’t happen under Skydance as well.

For this article I made a list of several Skydance pairings (one thing owned by Paramount and one thing owned by Warner Bros.) that I think have the biggest red flags and potential for conflict under the Skydance merger and what I think could happen when they both come under one corporate umbrella. Will they merge? Will one outlast the other? Will they continue existing without interference from Skydance or will they completely change the way they operate under Skydance’s leadership? Here are my hopes, predictions and speculations.

Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures

Right now Skydance is trying to reassure people that both Paramount and Warner Bros. will not merge and will continue to remain separate entities. And I hope that’s true but it’s hard to believe anything they say about what’s going to happen given how little precedent there is for two movie studios as big as Paramount and WB being overseen by one company, especially given how much more practical it would probably be to run one movie studio instead of two. Whether or not Paramount and WB can truly co-exist may depend on how profitable both studios can be for Skydance in the near future. Money is the lifeblood of Hollywood after all. Also I don’t see Skydance risking its reputation by being known as the company that killed a major legacy studio (I said the same thing about Netflix when they tried to buy Warner Bros.), and for that reason I predict both Paramount and WB are safe for the near future. Although I still don’t believe Skydance when they say they have the ability to release 30 movies a year, but that’s another story.

CBS News and CNN

CBS is a broadcast network and CNN is a cable network so they exist in different corners of the media landscape, but the main concern everyone has about these two coming under one roof has less to do with their survival as separate news organizations and more to do with how they will conduct news under the oligarchic rule of the Ellisons. We already got a sneak peak of this when Skydance gained control of CBS News in 2025 and put self-proclaimed centrist and MAGA puppet Bari Weiss in charge as the organization’s editor-in-chief, which led to the scrapping of certain news segments on 60 Minutes that didn’t align with the Republican agenda. Under her rule she has also been accused of editorial bias for the way she pushes for the smearing of progressives and the boosting of right-wing conspiracy theories, so she is basically trying to turn CBS News into Fox News. CNN could potentially lean more towards the right under Skydance as well, but it’s a good sign so far that Mark Thompson will remain in charge as the news network’s CEO for now, because he seems to be a person who actually cares about journalistic integrity. And given how unpopular the changes at CBS News have been with both insiders and TV viewers so far, it’s possible Skydance is aware that the key to CNN’s survival may be letting professional journalists do their jobs.

Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network

The cable networks Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network were both already shells of their former selves before this merger happened, with streaming services being the main reason for this. So I don’t know if Skydance will even bother merging these two together into one network because even that might not be worth the effort given how cable television has been on a slow decline for years now. Although I am more worried about Cartoon Network right now, because I do think that if one of these networks is going to survive, it’s going to be Nickelodeon. SpongeBob SquarePants is still the network’s MVP to this day. Teen Titans Go! is the closest thing Cartoon Network has to a SpongeBob, but that series doesn’t have quite the same pop-cultural reach, and these days Cartoon Network definitely needs the DC Universe more than the DC Universe needs Cartoon Network.

Comedy Central and Adult Swim

Two cable networks now owned by Skydance that are known for their comedies aimed at adults are Comedy Central and Adult Swim. Thanks to South Park and The Daily Show, Comedy Central is still somewhat relevant today, even if the golden age of the 2010s seems far behind them now. While Adult Swim is still cranking out a ton of creative comedies and occasional gems on a regular basis. Will these two merge? Probably not. But I do think Adult Swim holds more value than its daytime neighbor Cartoon Network, so maybe if Cartoon Network gets shut down, Adult Swim content will either move to Nickelodeon or move to Comedy Central and go down the same TV-to-streaming pipeline as shows like South Park. And if the owners of these networks (MTV Network Group, Nickelodeon Group and The Cartoon Network, Inc.) ever get shut down, all these shows will likely just go straight to streaming anyway.

HBO and Showtime

HBO and Showtime are two premium cable networks that have a lot in common. Both started out licensing unedited theatrical films and later became popular for their original scripted programs aimed at adults. And while HBO’s shows tend to lean into a mature and sophisticated vibe and Showtime’s shows generally lean more into an exploitative guilty pleasure vibe, they are similar enough that I have a feeling one won’t be around for much longer, and I think we all know which one is going to disappear first. It already started a few years ago when Showtime’s standalone streaming service ended and the cable network’s on-screen branding changed to “Paramount+ with Showtime,” which at the time was the same name as Paramount+’s premium tier. Even before the merger I predicted Showtime’s days as a cable network were numbered, but now with Skydance owning both HBO and Showtime, it seems even more likely Showtime will shut down.

HBO Max and Paramount+

These two eventually merging is totally inevitable, especially given how less popular both of these streaming services are compared to others like Netflix, Hulu and Disney+. I’m sure a streaming service that offers Yellowstone, South Park, Rick and Morty and Game of Thones all in one place is too much of a powerhouse for Skydance to pass up. I just hope it doesn’t impact the creative community in Hollywood too much because I know this avalanche of IPs will make it harder for artists to get their original projects greenlit by both Paramount and Warner Bros. And whatever they do, I hope they DON’T call this new combined streaming service Skydance+.

Warner Bros. Television Studios and Paramount Television Studios

I’m interested to see how this is going to be handled because WB and Paramount both have a huge presence in television production. This decade alone Warner Bros. Television had success with Ted Lasso, Abbott Elementary, The Pitt, Stuart Fails to Save the Universe and Lanterns while Paramount Television had success with Emily in Paris, Mayor of Kingstown, Reacher, Tulsa King and Dexter: Resurrection. I can especially see these two potentially being affected if HBO Max and Paramount+ merge and Skydance decides to simplify their TV operations. But that’s on the live-action side. Animated television production is another story, and I think it will likely remain unaffected by the merger because I don’t see much conflict happening here. Even if you ignore the legacy of the Looney Tunes, which are by far the most popular animated shorts of the 20th century to this day, Warner Bros. Animation has always had a huge presence in entertainment, particularly on TV beginning with Tiny Toon Adventures in 1990 and regularly in the following years thanks to Kids’ WB, Cartoon Network and the popularity of the DC Animated Universe. Plus they have been one of the most prolific producers of straight-to-video movies with their steady stream of Scooby-Doo, Tom and Jerry and DC productions over the past two decades. Paramount on the other hand has historically had a much smaller presence in the world of animation. The studio used to distribute Popeye and Betty Boop for Fleischer, but Warner Bros. owns the rights to the Popeye films and many of the other Fleischer cartoons are in the public domain now. The only animated Paramount TV shows I can think of are Star Trek: The Animated Series, Duckman and Beavis and Butt-Head. Nickelodeon Animation Studio has always been the closest thing Paramount has had to a “Warner Bros. Animation” in terms of prolific production. But I can see the two studios co-existing, especially given how popular both Batman and SpongeBob are.

Warner Bros. Pictures Animation and Skydance Animation

This is the one that has me the most nervous. Warner Bros. Pictures Animation seems like the most unlucky modern animation studio in Hollywood. They came out of the gate on fire with their hit film The Lego Movie, but after that they made a few box office stumbles, The Lego Movie 2 bombed at the box office, the pandemic pushed Tom and Jerry and Space Jam: A New Legacy out of the theater, and on top of that, Warner Bros. put Coyote vs. Acme in movie limbo. It seems like they are finally getting on track again in 2026 with the release of both Coyote vs. Acme and The Cat in the Hat, but now they are once again facing another threat: Skydance Animation. Despite Skydance Animation’s mixed track record so far, and their reputation as a Disney wannabe for the streaming era, it seems like Skydance is really investing a lot of effort into making that studio work. The huge success of Swapped on Netflix is likely not going to end those plans any time soon. My guess is that Skydance likely cares a lot more about Skydance Animation than Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, but my hope is that Skydance keeps Warner Bros. Pictures Animation around as their go-to theatrical animation arm while Skydance continues using Skydance Animation for straight-to-streaming films. But I don’t want Paramount Animation to get lost in this discussion. For as low-key as that studio’s presence has always been in Hollywood, my money is on that one sticking around if only for Skydance to capitalize further on SpongeBob, the Ninja Turtles and Paw Patrol, but I also just want to see more of what that studio is capable of. Under the Boardwalk and Transformers One are both underrated films that should have been bigger hits for Paramount Animation, and they have a lot of other films currently in development that sound like they have potential to be great as well.