When the Skydance C-suite started being unveiled last week featuring Davis Ellison’s key lieutenants, the international piece of the puzzle was largely left unsolved.

The list of senior executives did not answer the question of who would oversee the old Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery’s (WBD) considerable presences outside of the U.S., which incorporates hundreds of staffers around the world in streaming, TV networks like the UK’s 5 and Australia’s Network Ten, and distribution of some of the biggest movie franchises and TV shows out there.

That left international insiders we spoke with through last week feeling a bit lost, and they were none the wiser following the Ellison town hall that took place Wednesday. “Everyone is in the dark at the moment, and I think that’s probably true for almost everyone globally,” said one such Warner insider late on that day.

Slowly over the past few days, the question in terms of at least the very top of the chain has been answered but with some caveats.

JB Perrette, one of the big winners of the $110B merger, will take on streaming and networks outside of the U.S. as part of his tongue-twisting new role: Co-Chair & Chief Business Officer, Skydance TV and Co-Chair & Chief Business Officer, Skydance Direct-To-Consumer. One insider we’ve spoken to described his role as one of the most important at the new-look Skydance, given the scope of the role.

Perrette is well known in international circles and has spent much time abroad over the past 15 years, first at Discovery where he rose up to President and CEO of Discovery Networks International, and then at the merged WBD, where as part of his President and CEO of Global Streaming & Games role he led the global rollout of HBO Max, navigating the knotty exit of HBO’s long-term output deal with Sky in the UK, Germany and Italy, for example. That one has now been resolved and HBO Max is busy building around the world and commissioning local originals under Sarah Aubrey and a team of commissioners in different countries.

Sales & Free-To-Air Chiefs Installed

Perrette’s new role does technically incorporate global distribution, but it will be his trusted new lieutenant, David Decker, who is at this particular coalface, as he has taken on the post of President of Content Sales, shopping huge franchises from the Paramount and Warner libraries including NCIS, The Big Bang Theory, The Bachelor and Star Trek around the world.

The timing is good for former WBD content sales boss Decker, with the biggest international TV market of the year, MIPCOM Cannes, well underway. He has had a packed schedule this week as buyers get their heads around the ways of the new Skydance content sales team, and we hear he is encouraging a business-as-usual approach with his sellers.

Decker is one of three new reports to Perrette, alongside Chief Revenue Officer Jay Askinasi and President, Distribution Ray Hopkins. Yet Perrette and Decker’s meaty roles still leave gaps – slightly lower down the international chain, questions remain over how territories are divided up and who looks after what.

We can today reveal that CBS Chief Operating Officer Bryon Rubin is at least temporarily taking charge of free-to-air networks 5 and Network Ten, although an announcement on a more permanent future for these nets is expected over the next few weeks.

Rubin, who has been COO and CFO of CBS since 2020, reports into new Skydance TV boss George Cheeks.

With more announcements expected shortly, it could well be that Perrette, Rubin and co are planning to install a longer-term head of free-to-air networks or a separate head of international streaming (those who could be in the frame include the likes of Paramount+ EVP Marco Nobili and 5 boss Reemah Sakaan), while it remains to be seen how the world will be divided up in terms of territory.

A week is a long time in the world of entertainment and just a few days ago it felt as though things could have panned out oh so differently. It initially appeared that the top international job would be a direct run-off between Paramount’s Kevin MacLellan and WBD’s long-serving Gerhard Zeiler.

However, Zeiler has lofty political ambitions, which could even see him become Chancellor of his native Austria, and both Zeiler and MacLellan have now confirmed their exits. MacLellan’s came just a few weeks after he detailed at a London convention how Ellison had sold him the Skydance dream. Such is the way of C-suite politics.

In the meantime, the deep-lying concerns raised by Ellison’s planned $6B synergies are of course reverberating internationally and sources we speak with are quietly cognisant that big changes could be afoot. As MIPCOM moves into day two, more international clarity is desired following a week that will go down in the annals of entertainment industry history.

Skydance declined comment.

EXCLUSIVE: The first sales for Honey have rolled in as the darkly comedic thriller had its world premiere in Cannes.

The Cold War drama is for the BBC and ZDF. It has been pre-bought by Australian streamer Stan and Sky in New Zealand. Fifth Season is distributing the show and has also sealed presales with OSN+ for the Middle East and North Africa and Hot in Israel.

The deals come in the wake of a glitzy premiere for the series at MIPCOM in Cannes. The sunny setting on the Côte d’Azur was far removed from the icy East Berlin backdrop of the opening episode of the show. It follows Martha, played by Ann Skelly (House of Guinness), a deep cover agent in 1982 Germany. She explores a shadowy world of counterespionage and finds herself blindsided by desire in a Cold War ménage à trois.

Skelly, Sally Woodward Gentle, the series executive producer at Sid Gentle Films, lead writer and EP Emma Moran and Jennifer Ebell, EVP, Television Distribution at Fifth Season all spoke about the show before the first episode rolled.

Skelly appears alongside Nate Mann, Jannis Niewöhner and Rory Kinnear in the series.

“Seeing a character so brazen and bold and full of want, that’s really fun because I didn’t really grow up with many female characters like that,” Skelly said of playing Martha in the Deadline-moderated Q+A. “She’s just incredibly ambitious and totally backs herself and is full of confidence, but not quite the experience, which is, I think, so much fun to watch a character like that.”

The Martha character is one that went on to appear in Killing Eve. Fiona Shaw played the character latterly known as Carolyn Martens. The team behind Honey, however, have been at pains to stress that while it is the same universe, it is not a prequel.

The series has elements of spy thriller, romance, comedy and drama, and Moran said that was what drew her in. “The tone was what excited me about the idea, I loved smashing together romance and spy [genres],” she said.

“We’re in semi-totalitarian society [in the series] where you have to watch yourself ,and desires have to be restrained. With the love triangle that dominates the show, it was so satisfying play with those two poles of, ‘I can’t say who I am, I can’t do this’ but then to have desire crash into that.”