Hollywood's new power player

A series of swift deal maneuvers over the past few weeks suggest David Ellison, son of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, is looking to quickly buy his way to the top of Hollywood.Why it matters: Few moguls have access to enough money to be able to acquire major companies, sports rights and film rights all at once. Fewer have the political capital to get away with a massive media deal blitz in the Trump administration. For Ellison, 42, now is a ripe time to move in on distressed media assets that are struggling to survive in the streaming era. Now that his company Skydance Media has finally completed its merger with Paramount Global, he is looking ahead to bigger targets. State of play: Paramount Skydance is working on a cash bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, a source familiar with the discussions tells Axios.The deal would give the CBS parent access to another major news network, CNN, and a rival Hollywood studio, Warner Bros. Pictures.It would also breathe new life into Paramount Skydance's streamer Paramount+, which — combined with WBD's HBO Max — could better compete with Netflix and Disney for scale. By the numbers: A deal to buy WBD in cash wouldn't come cheap. WBD is currently valued at around $40 billion on the public market. It has $35 billion in debt remaining from the merger of Discovery and WarnerMedia, which formed the current company in 2022. Of note: In addition to family money, Ellison leveraged capital from RedBird Capital Partners, a private investment firm, to help foot the bill for his takeover of Paramount this summer. A source told Axios that RedBird would not be involved in a deal to acquire WBD. Zoom out: Ellison has wasted no time trying to move in on lucrative sports rights and movie distribution deals since finalizing the Paramount merger in August. Paramount Skydance announced a surprise deal to acquire the U.S. rights to Ultimate Fighting Championship for $7.7 billion over seven years, days after the deal closed. It signed a first-look deal with Will Smith's Westbrook production firm earlier this month. It also finalized a new three-year film distribution deal with Legendary Entertainment the same week. Yes, but: A merger with WBD would put Ellison at the helm of not one but two major news networks, that come with a new set of regulatory and political headaches. Already, Ellison has made several changes to CBS News, including appointing an ombudsman that has donated to pro-Trump and conservative causes, and adjusting its rules for editing interviews.The company is in advanced talks with former New York Times writer-turned independent journalist Bari Weiss to acquire her news site, The Free Press, and give her a senior editorial role at the company, Axios has confirmed.Reality check: WBD's history shows that efforts to buy your way into Hollywood can be challenging, although Ellison is no stranger to Tinseltown. He founded Skydance Media in 2006. He himself has produced several films, including "Top Gun: Maverick" and several movies from the "Mission: Impossible" franchise. The big picture: A merger between Paramount Skydance and WBD would create a global media behemoth that would reshape the entire entertainment industry, putting real pressure on tech giants with newfound scale. But major mergers of legacy companies also come with lots of risk, as evidenced by WBD's announced plans to split its streaming and studio divisions from its legacy cable networks.

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