When Skydance confirmed the company’s executive leadership team Monday, most industry reaction centered on elevated roles for content execs like Casey Bloys, Channing Dungey and George Cheeks.

But another exec in a key new post is JB Perrette, a veteran of streaming since its earliest days and a close associate of Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav. He is not only making the leap to the new company from a top position at WBD (something of a surprise given that execs at the company being acquired generally head for the exits), but his turf is also expanding in some intriguing ways.

Skydance is due to close the deal Tuesday morning, and Perrette will join Co-CEOs David Ellison, Ynon Kreiz and others at a press conference later that afternoon on the Paramount lot.

Upon the close of the $110 billion deal, Perrette will be Co-Chair & Chief Business Officer, Skydance DTC and Co-Chair & Chief Business Officer, Skydance TV. He will have direct global oversight of global distribution, advertising sales, content sales, DTC strategy, marketing and business operations.

Perrette is poised to benefit handsomely from the merger. An SEC filing last March said he would receive $142 million in various deal-related proceeds, though some portion of that could be deferred given his post in the new company. One source cited the massive payday as a potential motivating factor. “He certainly didn’t need the money,” the person said. “He obviously felt compelled by the opportunity.”

At WBD, Perrette was head of global streaming and gaming, leading the global rollout of HBO Max across more than 130 global markets, including the UK, Germany and Italy after the end of a longtime output deal with Sky. The WBD streaming business (which includes some niche services along with mother ship HBO Max) also turned profitable on Perrette’s watch. One less-desirable line on the resume is presiding with Zaslav over the inauspicious rebrand of HBO Max to Max in 2023. (After confusion and a degree of backlash among viewers, suppliers and advertisers, it reverted to its original name in 2025.)

While any exec who is in a high position long enough will have missteps, many industry and company sources Deadline spoke with described Perrette as a solid operational executive. Bloys may be the rainmaker with HBO and HBO Max content, but Perrette oversaw product design, global distribution deals and a host of other aspects of the streamer’s growth. Plus, he comes with a pedigree.

At Discovery, Perrette was head of digital and helped launch Eurosport’s streaming service as well as Discovery+, but his 11-year run at NBCUniversal yielded an industry milestone. Overlapping with Zaslav during their time at NBCU, Perrette rose to president of digital and affiliate distribution. He helped usher in the streaming era as one of the key execs behind Hulu’s launch in 2007 as a joint venture with Fox, later serving for several years on the streamer’s board.

Company insiders describe a series of conversations between Perrette and Ellison over the past several weeks, a period when he gradually gained the confidence of the new Skydance boss and his co-CEO, Ynon Kreiz. “He is often the one asking the best questions in the room and has the most comprehensive view,” one former colleague said. Another person from the Paramount orbit said the execs had a “mind-meld” encompassing the future capabilities of streaming services in the AI age.

Perrette also has experience with the blocking and tackling of things like password sharing and other lucrative but detail-oriented operational tasks. Paramount board member and major Skydance investor Gerry Cardinale last week noted that efforts to merge the back ends and tech stacks of Paramount+, Pluto and BET+ have borne fruit. “We’ve already done a hell of a job,” he said. “Then we are going to do the same thing when we bring the HBO universe into this.”

A high-level streaming executive at another company noted that the move could save hundreds of millions of dollars in expenses at a time when Skydance will be eager to deliver on its promise of saving at least $6 billion in costs. “JB is good casting for that kind of thing because he’s willing to get into the weeds on it,” the person said.

While the fundamentals of streaming technology are familiar to Perrette, advertising and distribution may be a bit less so. “There was a lot of confusion when that popped up in the release because it doesn’t seem like he has a very extensive background in that,” one insider noted of the official announcement. As the former Paramount and WBD come together, there are some unanswered questions about the hierarchy of ad sales in particular, with both companies having recently gone through leadership changes. More details about the second level of top execs will be revealed in the coming days.

On second thought, noted one source, “what we took for granted all those years at the upfronts is up for grabs. Ellison is trying to turn it into a tech company. What will advertising even look like in that kind of environment?”

A group of Paramount subscribers and viewers have petitioned the Supreme Court to put at least a temporary halt to the merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, a transaction that is scheduled to close on Tuesday.

In a filing on Monday, the petitioners — Pamela Faust, Len Marazzo, Lisa McCarthy, Deborah Rubinsohn and Gary Talewsky — argue that the merger is still anticompetitive, even with the conditions put in place by the settlement of the state attorneys general lawsuit last month.

“The States’ settlement itself requires that the combined company not sell or close the Paramount or Warner Bros. lots during the commitment period, provides reapplication rights to employees displaced by the transaction, and creates an editorial-independence board. Those safeguards show the magnitude of the integration that closing will unleash, but they do not preserve competition between Paramount and Warner Bros.”

The petition is a longshot, given that the plaintiffs’ efforts to stop the merger has been rejected by the district court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The plaintiffs, represented by Joseph M. Alioto, sought a temporary restraining order to block the merger. But U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin, in a ruling last week, cited the plaintiffs’ “repeated failures to advance any evidence in support of their motions for preliminary relief in this case to date.” She also cited an earlier decision in which she granted Paramount’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, in which she wrote that she had “serious concerns” over the plaintiffs’ standing.

A federal appellate court denied their petition on Friday.

In their petition to the Supreme Court, the plaintiffs pointed to the record of transaction materials, CEO statements and consumer verifications.

Their brief states, “The requested order is narrow: preserve separate ownership and prohibit integration pending disposition of the petition or further order. It does not decide final antitrust liability. It preserves the Court’s ability to decide the legal questions before the October 6 closing changes the competitive structure the Clayton Act is designed to protect.”

The plaintiffs describe themselves as Paramount subscribers, viewers and cable customers. Their lawsuit was originally filed last spring, before the group of state attorneys general sued to block the deal. The settlement includes a consent decree that spells out a 30+ theatrical releases per year schedule, as well as separate negotiations for the Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery cable channels.