Who Wants to Buy Paramount?

Photo: Eric Thayer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Paramount Global is in a delicate position. With a possible sale looming and the ousting of the company's CEO, Bob Bakish — his tenure was eulogized on April 29 in a swift nine-minute investors' call that ended with the Mission: Impossible theme song — the company is clearly in the midst of massive change. There are bidding contenders but no clear-cut outcome of who may take Shari Redstone's, of the Redstone family, the controlling entity at Paramount, stake of the company. CEO and founder of Skydance Media David Ellison has been a front-runner, nabbing an exclusive bidding window to strike up a possible deal with Paramount Global, but his company's time may be up, and it may be time for other companies to strike while the iron is hot. Sony and Apollo Global Management sure have. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Discovery's interest in Paramount lasted for two seconds comparatively. It has its own problems to contend with.

So, as Skydance's bidding window comes to a close, who are all the potential buyers as of now? The horse race for Paramount (whose components include its historic movie studio, CBS, the Paramount+ streaming service, and a raft of cable networks like MTV and Comedy Central) has been long, confusing, and ever changing. So, here's a crash course on who the contenders are and what's going on with each of them as of now. Of course, this will all still be in flux until an official deal is made, so we'll update this accordingly until then.

After the longest flirtation with Paramount Global, this initial bidder, led by CEO and founder David Ellison, may be seeing its chances of buying the company coming to an end. (Though, if you learn anything from this article, it's that this could change in a heartbeat.) Ellison along with his father, Larry Ellison — and investors RedBird Capital and KKR — have been professionally courting Shari Redstone about a potential deal publicly for about six months, longer than anyone else on this list. The younger Ellison even has history with the company as he executive produced a few Paramount projects, most notably Mission: Impossible — Fallout and Star Trek Beyond.

But as of May 3, Skydance's exclusive bidding window is on the precipice of expiring. Ellison's company reportedly put in their "best and final offer" to Redstone on Sunday, April 28. (The bid was not mentioned during Paramount's earnings call the next day.) Paramount is allowed to continue working on an offer from Skydance, if it so chooses, but as of now, Skydance seems ready to choose not to extend "unless it receives a firm commitment from controlling shareholder Shari Redstone," as reported by CNBC, due to Sony and Apollo's latest bid.

What the entertainment production company Skydance pitched is slightly usual: It's looking to acquire Redstone's National Amusements, a movie-theater operating company with a majority ownership in Paramount Global, thus giving Skydance an ownership stake of Paramount. If accepted, Shari Redstone could receive a very healthy payout, but Skydance's deal needs to pass through a second committee at Paramount, which did not include former CEO Bob Bakish, who did not have full confidence in this deal with Skydance. The committee was made up of independent directors, advised by Centerview Partners and the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, who sifted through the deal to make sure it would satisfy more shareholders than just Redstone and her company National Amusements.

An asset-management firm with a minority stake in Legendary Entertainment — the company behind Dune, ever heard of her? — Apollo has experience in the industry but is looking to add another entertainment company to its portfolio. Initially, the firm sought to bid on Paramount Global alone to no avail. In March, before Skydance received an exclusive one-month window, Apollo offered Paramount Global an initial $11 billion bid that turned into a $26 billion bid in early April. The Wall Street Journal reported, at the time, that Paramount directors went with Skydance over the asset firm because "it wasn't clear how Apollo would finance its bid." Redstone is also not keen on Apollo, as it could easily sell Paramount for parts, as opposed to Skydance. So, after their rejection, Apollo has now teamed up with Sony to juice their finances and, really, chances to acquire Paramount. It may be working as the Skydance exclusivity period has run its course, and Apollo and Sony's fresh bid may be deterring Skydance from re-extending.

As Skydance's exclusive bidding period comes to an end, Sony and Apollo Global Management are the new tag-team players in the race for Paramount. And they're coming out swinging. On Thursday, May 2, the duo placed an all-cash bid of $26 billion, along with an offer letter signed by chief executive of Sony Pictures Tony Vinciquerra and Apollo's Aaron Sobel. It is not a binding offer and is more so an expression of interest, but it's one that could be very enticing to Paramount (though possibly not as attractive to Redstone, who stands to walk away with more cash with the Skydance offer). Unlike Apollo's previous offers, Sony could help ease Redstone and Paramount execs' fears of breaking the company apart as Sony is, of course, an entertainment company — but more importantly, it will be the majority stakeholder while Apollo will be the minority, according to this current bid.

Some additional context: A media company with no streaming service would very well likely be interested in building out Paramount+ (with Showtime) with Sony projects. Currently, Sony has a streaming exclusivity deal with Netflix. (Ironically, Netflix itself tried to buy Paramount Pictures in 2019.)

There is a possible downside: If Sony takes over, it could well decide to eliminate a ton of overlapping jobs at longtime rival Paramount. There'd basically be one less fully independent movie and TV studio in Hollywood. (This is exactly what happened when Disney bought Rupert Murdoch's Fox entertainment assets. There are still movies and shows released with the Fox label — but they're still Disney productions.)

Honorable mention goes to CEO David Zaslav, who really doesn't need anymore debt, but for some reason thought he could handle buying Paramount Global. Back in December 2023, Zaslav and Bakish explored the possibility of WBD buying Paramount and merging their streaming services (Paramax?) but, like with Coyote vs. Acme and Batgirl, that idea vanished soon after in February 2024, after WBD stock fell 47 percent and its share trades "near a 52-week low."