Paramount set to accelerate planned cull of at least 2,500 staff
Skydance-owned Paramount is poised to begin its planned job cuts earlier than expected, with the David Ellison-led company reportedly planning a major round of lay-offs before the end of the month.
The cuts will begin on the week of October 27, Deadline was the first to report, ahead of the company’s third-quarter earnings report on November 10.
The US media company is expected to eliminate between 2,500 and 3,000 positions between now and the end of the year as it is reoriented under new owner Skydance.
Reports suggest around 2,000 of the lay-offs will take place in the US, while it is less clear how many overseas staffers will be affected.
In total, the combined company has around 20,000 employees globally, 18,000 from Paramount and between 1,000 and 2,000 from Skydance.
The lay-offs are part of previously announced plans to find US$2bn in annualised post-merger savings, although Ellison noted in August that he sees a path to “meaningfully exceed” that total.
Several key execs have left the business in recent months, including co-CEOs Brian Robbins and Chris McCarthy, distribution boss Dan Cohen and president and CEO of international markets, global consumer products and experiences Pam Kaufman.
In August, new Paramount president Jeff Shell said the redundancies would occur in a single, comprehensive round rather than being spread across multiple financial quarters, as had been typical under previous leadership. “It’s going to be painful. It’s always hard, but we do not want to be a company that every quarter is laying people off,” he said at the time.
Under its previous owners, Paramount has been the subject of multiple rounds of major redundancies in recent years. In the second half of 2024, the company cut around 15% of its US-based workforce, with a further 3.5% of its American workers being laid off in June.
The latest job cuts come as Paramount is preparing another bid to acquire Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), in a mega-merger that would also result in mass lay-offs. Paramount reportedly made an offer of around US$20 per share earlier this month, but WBD rejected the offer as too low.
WBD is in the midst of splitting into two, with one company (Warner Bros) housing the studio and streaming assets including HBO, HBO Max, Warner Bros Television and Warner Bros Motion Picture Group, and the other housing the linear networks and several other assets, including Discovery+, all under the Discovery Global brand.
Under Ellison’s apparent plan, Paramount would acquire all of WBD before it is split, potentially pre-empting a round of bidding for Warner Bros. However, Netflix and Apple have seemingly ruled themselves out of the running in recent weeks, meaning the field of potential suitors is smaller than at first expected.
Paramount has reportedly been in talks with private equity giant Apollo Global Management about backing the takeover bid. Ellison is also exploring various paths in his pursuit of WBD, according to a recent report in Bloomberg, including tabling an increased bid, bringing in additional backers or appealing directly to WBD shareholders.
