Leaked audio: What David Ellison told employees at the first Skydance town hall

Skydance CEO David Ellison welcomed Warner Bros.

Discovery employees and thanked Paramount staffers for their patience at the combined company’s first-ever town hall. “This is an incredibly exciting day,” Ellison said at an employee-only meeting, according to an audio recording obtained by Business Insider. “I want to start with the most important thing I can say to all of you: Thank you.” Ellison addressed workers at 1 p.m.

ET, hours after sending a companywide memo announcing that the $110 billion Paramount-WBD merger had closed.

Bruno Mars’ hit song “I Just Might” played in the moments before Ellison took the stage. “It is humbling to be in this room,” Ellison said at the start of his remarks.

He then reflected on Paramount’s long journey toward buying WBD, saying it “caps off a long-term plan that is three years in the making.” “Let me be honest: It was not easy to get here.

At times, it was downright ugly,” Ellison said, before adding that he’d “do it all over again in a heartbeat.” The Skydance CEO, along with co-CEO Ynon Kreiz, unveiled the company’s four top priorities in a Tuesday memo: win in storytelling, become the most technologically capable media company, lead in a crowded market, and earn trust every day.

Skydance has a wide array of media assets, including the Warner Bros. studio and Paramount Pictures; streamers HBO Max, Paramount+, Pluto TV, and Discovery+; and TV channels CBS, CNN, HBO, HGTV, TLC, and Discovery Channel. “For the first time, we have the studios, the franchises, the libraries, the talent and scale all under one roof to compete with anyone in the world,” Ellison said. “It is incredibly exciting.” The combined company has the scale and firepower to “go toe to toe with the biggest competitors,” Ellison said, though he emphasized that size isn’t everything. “We didn’t do this deal simply to get bigger,” Ellison said.

He added that “we’re going to invest aggressively in great storytelling.” Skydance will take on Hollywood powerhouses like Disney and Netflix, as well as tech giants like Amazon and Google’s YouTube. “We’re not just competing with traditional media companies anymore,” Ellison said. “We’re competing for people’s time and attention with some of the largest and most sophisticated technology companies in the world, companies with enormous scale, global reach, and virtually unlimited resources.” Ellison said that Skydance is “going to embrace technology — not just as a buzzword or as a side project, but as a fundamental capability of this company.” Kreiz is tasked with managing the merger integration and running day-to-day operations, while Ellison will form Skydance’s creative and tech strategies. “We are not here to preserve the status quo.

We are here to build for what comes next,” Ellison said of himself and Kreiz.

Before the merger, Paramount and WBD staffers said they were uneasy about cross-company competition as the two media powers joined forces, a move Ellison has told investors will lead to $6 billion in cost cuts.

The company has said that layoffs won’t be the source of most of the savings. “Bringing together two companies of this size and complexity will require difficult decisions,” Ellison said. “There will be changes, and there will be impacts.

I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

What I can promise you is that we will move through those decisions as quickly and thoughtfully as we can.” CNN star Anderson Cooper later joined Ellison onstage and said that there was “a lot of concern and fear” about potential changes at the news giant, even though top executive Mark Thompson is staying on.

The Skydance CEO responded by promising not to interfere in CNN’s coverage and to focus on journalism.

Ellison’s company had a long, winding path to buying WBD.

Paramount initiated a rival bid for WBD, which had previously signed a deal with Netflix.

After winning the bidding war for WBD, Paramount was sued by 12 states as well as the Writers Guild of America, before settling those lawsuits and pledging to boost its domestic production, among other concessions.

During his remarks, Ellison shouted out Makan Delrahim, the company’s legal chief, who had served in the Department of Justice during President Donald Trump’s first term. “None of us would be here if it was not for Makan,” Ellison said.