movies
Paramount-WBD Deal Architect Gerry Cardinale Says Most Of $6B In Expected Cost Savings Will Not Be Layoffs
Gerry Cardinale, Paramount board member and principal architect of the company’s imminent merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, insists that most of the deal’s cost savings will not come from layoffs.
The company has promised investors it will deliver $6 billion in cost savings from the $110 billion transaction, but Cardinale maintains that non-labor costs will make up the majority. A Hollywood community already reeling from Covid, labor unrest and overall consolidation and contraction has assumed that thousands of workers will be pink-slipped. Independent analyses have projected a similar outcome, and a look back at prior mergers shows they tend to leave a lot of workers out in the cold.
“That notion that $6 billion of cost-related synergies means you’re firing all these people is just completely antiquated,” Cardinale said in an appearance at the Bloomberg Screentime conference Thursday. “If you look at what we have in front of us, most the majority of those cost synergies are related to non-labor spend. We’re going to unify the text stacks across direct-to-consumer. We already did that with Paramount+ and Pluto and BET+. We’ve already done a hell of a job. Then we are going to do the same thing when we bring the HBO universe into this.”
The $110 billion merger is due to close Tuesday, following a lengthy legal battle and a year of negotiations involving multiple suitors.
Real estate is another area of focus in terms of cost-cutting, Cardinale said. “We have real estate at Paramount, when we bought Paramount [in 2025] that people at Paramount didn’t even know they had,” he said. Plus, he continued, “there’s no enterprise resource planning system. You don’t even know what spending goes on across all the divisions. We’re going to optimize for the way we spend marketing dollars. There’s so much that we can do. And again, in any industry that is challenged, any industry, you’re going to have labor-related cost rationalization, but that’s not what’s driving this.”
Cardinale was asked about CEO David Ellison and what has positioned him as one of Hollywood’s leading figures despite a fairly brief LinkedIn page in terms of running major companies.
“Look at him. He’s 43 years old, and look at the talent that he attracts,” the RedBird Capital founder said. “People are incredibly loyal to him. You can’t fake that. And let me tell you, there’s no last name in the world that delivers that. You either ar it or you’re not. And people want to work for him because he’s genuine. authentic.”
Cardinale also pushed back on the perception that Ellison got where he is purely through nepotism given that his father, Larry Ellison, is one of the world’s richest men.
“To go back to the name, you know, he could be a total jerk. This guy is the most humble, nicest guy I think I’ve ever met,” Cardinale said. “He’s not about the glitz and the glamor. He really cares about the industry. He cares about the people, both on the talent side, the content creator side, the people who he’s, you know, attracted to come here, uh, and, you know, he’s gonna do this for the rest of his professional career. And he’s young. And so I actually think he’s the future.”
Ellison as an individual “really motivated me to bet my firm and my career” on the WBD merger, Cardinale said. “The only way Hollywood is gonna move into this next phase, and level the playing field with the guys up north, is you’ve got to turn yourself into more of a technology company.”
Ben Affleck, who has been involved with RedBird on multiple ventures, found “the right way for Hollywood to go figure out how to level the playing field against the Silicon Valley guys” by founding an AI company. He later sold the company, Interpositive, to Netflix.
“Silicon Valley guys. I have a lot of respect for them,” Cardinale added. “They think they’re the IP in the equation. They’re distribution. The IP is the IP in the equation. And what I’m trying to do, and partnering with David and his passion, is to level a playing field for the guys here.”
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Eddie Murphy is heading back to the small screen for his first scripted series.
The Beverly Hills Cop and Coming To America star, who got his start on Saturday Night Live, is to star in The Chairman, a drama series from Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner that is in the works at Peacock.
Murphy has starred in around 40 movies since 48 Hours and has never headlined a scripted series, although he has created two shows back in the day: animated comedy The PJs for Fox and The Royal Family for CBS, both in the 1990s.
Details of the series have not been disclosed, but it being written and exec produced by Weiner, who has not had a series picked up since The Romanoffs for Amazon in 2018.
The Chairman comes from Yellowstone producer 101 Studios and Universal Television.
It marks the first project for the company, which is also behind series such as Landman and MobLand, since it struck a deal with NBCUniversal last year that coincided with Taylor Sheridan also moving his deal. The deal for the David Glasser-run company started in January of this year.
Murphy and Weiner, who also previously wrote and exec produced HBO’s The Sopranos, will also exec produce.
Murphy is coming off the back of Netflix documentary Being Eddie, which was directed by Angus Wall and came out last year. His last two movies were The Pickup, which came out last year via Amazon, and Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F. His next film is Shrek 5, which is set to be released next year.
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Fox News again handily topped the September and third quarter ratings, although as its viewership was down versus the same periods in 2025.
MS NOW saw gains in the most recent figures, and CNN also showed uptick in September and in certain dayparts for the quarter.
In primetime in September, Fox News averaged 1.72 million viewers, down 32% from the same month in 2025. MS NOW averaged 839,000, up 3.6% from a year earlier. CNN posted 539,000, down 0.7% from 2025. In the 25-54 demo, Fox News averaged 156,000 viewers, down 44.3% from a year earlier, compared to 90,000 for CNN, up 3.4%, and 79,000 for MS NOW, up 16.2%.
In total day in September, Fox News averaged 1.11 million, down 31.1% from 2025. MS NOW averaged 544,000, up 6.7%, and CNN posted 373,000, down 7%. In the 25-54 demo, Fox News averaged 106,000, down 40.8%, compared to CNN with 53,000, down 14.5%, and MS NOW with 52,000, up 15.6%.
In the third quarter primetime, Fox News averaged 2.06 million viewers, down 17% from a year earlier, compared to 930,000 for MS NOW, up 16%, and 607,000 for CNN, up 12.8%. In the 25-54 demo, Fox News averaged 183,000 viewers, down 24.7%, compared to CNN with 101,000, up 16.1%, and MS NOW with 84,000, up 27.3%.
In third quarter total day, Fox News averaged 1.32 million, down 15.8% versus 2025, compared to MS NOW with 592,000, up 20.3%, and CNN with 426,000, up 7.6%. In the 25-54 demo, Fox News averaged 120,000, down 24.5%, compared to CNN with 61,000, flat, and MS NOW with 56,000, up 36.6%.
Fox News’ The Five was the top cable news show in September, averaging 2.79 million viewers, followed by Jesse Watters Primetime with 2.4 million, Gutfeld! with 2.12 million, Hannity with 2.06 million and Special Report with Bret Baier with 2.04 million.
In the 25-54 demo, The Five was tops with 273,000, followed by Gutfeld! with 214,000, Jesse Watters Primetime with 212,000, Hannity with 204,000 and MS NOW’s The Rachel Maddow Show with 186,000.
Each network touted certain aspects of the figures. Fox News said that they were on track to have its highest rated midterm year ever. MS NOW promoted double digit viewership increases.
Among other networks, NewsNation said that its primetime viewership was up 12% in primetime in the third quarter and 8% in adults 25-54. NewsNation averaged 120,000 viewers in primetime during the third quarter, and 13,000 in the demo.
Newsmax averaged 185,000 in primetime for the quarter and 9,000 in the demo.
MS NOW’s top rated show in September was The Rachel Maddow Show, averaging 1.79 million viewers. CNN’s top show was NewsNight, averaging 610,000, and NewsNation’s was Cuomo, averaging 167,000. Newsmax’s top show was Rob Schmitt Tonight, averaging 305,000.
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movies
David Ellison’s “Coziness” With Donald Trump Is “Overstated”, Paramount Backer Gerry Cardinale Says
Gerry Cardinale, Paramount board member, investor and key architect of its pending merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, says the notion that CEO David Ellison is tight with Donald Trump has been “way overstated.”
“Forget about where you are on the political spectrum,” Cardinale said at the Bloomberg Screentime conference in L.A. on Thursday. “You have an administration that’s pro-business. Anybody in corporate America should have a relationship with that administration. And that’s not because it’s Trump. Trump is pro-business, he’s very interested in the technology community. So having that relationship does not mean in any way that there’s this coziness.”
Skydance’s pursuit of Paramount got complicated by a lawsuit Trump filed against Paramount-owned CBS News, but regulators approved it promptly approved it after the suit was settled for $16 million despite the dubious merits of the case. Then, during the chase for Warner Bros. Discovery, which Paramount expected to formally acquire next week after a year-long quest, Ellison and Paramount had numerous points of intersection with the Trump administration.
Ellison and others visited Trump’s compound in Mar-a-Lago, courted him in Washington and hosted events for him, including around the White House Correspondents Association ceremony. In operating Paramount, Ellison acquired The Free Press and installed its founder and editorial leader, Bari Weiss, as editor-in-chief of CBS News. The news division and shows like 60 Minutes have made a number of changes to its programming that are widely perceived to be overtures to the administration.
And then there is the UFC, which has a multi-billion-dollar rights deal with Paramount. Trump has attended UFC events, including one spectacle last summer held at the White House. Bloomberg editor Lucas Shaw, who was interviewing Cardinale, nodded to the spectacle, which streamed live on Paramount+. “There’s a difference between having a relationship and staging a fight on the White House lawn,” he said.
Cardinale replied by naming senior leaders of TKO Group, parent company of the UFC, including Nick Khan and Ari Emanuel. “They were in the front row next to Trump, Is Trump too cozy with them? Is Ari too cozy with Trump?” Shaw mentioned that Emanuel used to have Trump as a WME client.
“The inference on ‘cozy’ here is just not appropriate,” Cardinale said. “There’s nothing to it. I’m telling you. I’ve been with David, by his side every step of the way. There’s nothing to it. It makes for great headlines and clickbait. There’s nothing to it. Absolutely not.”
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