Former Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav collected a massive windfall (more than $600 million) for orchestrating the company’s $110 billion sale to Paramount – but he wasn’t alone.

Zaslav’s top deputies also made out extremely well from the combination under new corporate parent Skydance, which closed this week, according to SEC filings. Streaming and games chief JB Perrette, CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels and uber-distribution boss Bruce Campbell each took home payouts of between $120 million and $150 million, while international chief Gerhard Zeiler also pocketed around $90 million.

Together, the quintet of top execs collected more than $1.1 billion in merger-related compensation. In media and entertainment history, only the IPO and subsequent privatization of Ari Emanuel’s Endeavor Group Holdings rivals the merger in terms of executive compensation pegged to an M&A deal.

RELATED: Skydance Bumps Pay, Extends Contracts For Top Execs; New Bonuses For WBD Brass

Perrette could elect to defer the merger payout given that he is remaining in the exec fold at Skydance. Also, the windfalls are subject to taxes and withholdings, and stock options are vested on varying schedules. Several execs also had previously sold WBD shares, meaning this week hasn’t been a one-off income event for them.

While Zaslav is due to end up a billionaire from the deal, a company rep tells Deadline that he made efforts to share the upside opportunity across the company. Nearly half of the company’s 35,500 total employees had equity in the company as of this week’s merger close, up from about 8,500 in 2022.

Given the significant appreciation of the formerly moribund share price over the past year, about 500 employees now have more than $1 million apiece in equity, as the New York Post noted.

RELATED: New Skydance Sets Top Executive Structure As Paramount-WBD Merger Set To Close

Many others beyond the Big Five also recorded sizable paydays. Chief Legal Officer Priya Aiyar, a former American Airlines executive and deputy counsel with the U.S. Treasury and Energy departments, joined WBD in February 2025 but still managed to receive more than $57 million from the merger, for example. Debra Lee, the former BET CEO who served on the board of WBD, collected $1.3 million, while former board chair Samuel Di Piazza got $3.1 million. Ken Lowe, who sold Scripps Networks Interactive to Zaslav’s Discovery Communications for $14.6 billion in 2018 and then served on the WBD board, walked away with $18.1 million from the Skydance deal.

Zeiler was a holdover from the Time Warner and WarnerMedia eras, while Perrette, Wiedenfels and Campbell each played key roles at Discovery, which Zaslav took public as CEO in 2008. They helped take the company to new heights with the unlikely $43 billion merger with WarnerMedia in 2022 and then this year’s combination with Paramount. Along the way, they were given annual pay packages that often ranked among the richest in corporate America.

The Reverse Morris Trust transaction that combined Discovery with WarnerMedia was the brainchild of John Malone, the longtime Discovery investor and billionaire media sage who has long been a key advisor to Zaslav. Across the other companies controlled by Malone, notably Liberty Media, top executives have also recorded lavish compensation over the years.

WBD’s stock spent the majority of the post-Discovery merger period significantly underwater, but Zaslav and his team managed to draw acquisition interest from multiple bidders after declaring their intention to split into two companies.

After rebuffing an initial offer from Paramount at $18 a share, they accepted Netflix’s offer for the studios-and-streaming part of the company at $27.75 before finalizing with Paramount.

After more than four decades of supporting Stateside composers and lyricists working across visual media, the Society of Composers & Lyricists has opened its first permanent international chapter in London.

SCL UK was christened this evening with an intimate reception at the legendary AIR Studios in North London. SCL President Ashley Irwin was present alongside the SCL UK Steering Committee, which is led by Nainita Desai. They were joined by dozens of UK-based composers and lyricists from all corners of the industry.

“We’ve got so many members over here already, coming back and forth from the States and vice versa, working on American productions that it became obvious that we should have something here,” Irwin said of the SCL’s decision to open a UK chapter.

Irwin continued: “So what’s the SCL all about? For those of you who don’t know, we’re about advocacy and education. This is a community, first and foremost, of people who write music for audio-visual, whether it is film, television, or video games. Anything where there’s an image.”

After the opening speeches, a small band of musicians gathered to perform compositions created by five SCL UK members: Ruth Barrett, Stephen Barton, Atli Örvarsson, Carly Paradis, and Daniel Pemberton. All five musicians were present this evening and shared personal stories about how the SCL has helped them navigate their careers.

Before introducing a performance of his Project Hail Mary score, Pemberton said of the SCL: “This is an organization that has really had a unique place in advocating for us in the absence of a union. Without it, we might not have this ability to be able to come together.”

He added: “To everybody who keeps this going and to this new venture here in London, which is fantastic, thank you so much for everything you’re doing.”

The evening ended with a tribute to the late British composer George Fenton, who died on October 5, aged 76. Fenton was Oscar-nominated five times across his decades-long career for Gandhi (1983), Cry Freedom (1988), Dangerous Liaisons (1989), and The Fisher King (1992). He also wrote the music for David Attenborough’s The Blue Planet.

“George, his career was incredibly prolific,” American-British composer and SCL UK Steering Committee member Mike Ladouceur said, opening the tribute. “And even greater was his generosity. I knew George as a colleague. He was a visiting professor at the Royal College of Music. He was really such a big contributor not just there but throughout the whole musical ecosystem.”

Ladouceur added: “George Fenton not only defined a style of writing but really invented a genre of writing for natural history docs and so much more. So let’s celebrate George Fenton.”

The musicians performed a special medley of Fenton’s work.

The full SCL UK Steering Committee includes Mat Andasun, Claire Batchelor, Paul Farrer, Andrew Kremer, Mike Ladouceur, Bankey Ojo, and David Tobin.

Alongside the original LA chapter, the SCL also has outposts in New York, Chicago, and Nashville.