Skydance co-CEOs David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz sought to dial down Hollywood jitters that the company’s massive and expensive-to-service debt load approaching $80 billion will force them shortchange production.

“We have a business plan. There’s a complete financial envelope to how we’re going to run the business, and content is a spend, but you can also see it as an investment because it’s also going to drive growth,” Kreiz said during a press conference Tuesday to mark the close of the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. Skydance is looking to annual content spend of $30 to $40 billion.

“As a whole, yes, we have debt. But we expect to reduce the leverage. It’s really about the leverage ratio — what does the debt mean relative to profit. We intend to bring it down as we’ve said publicly two, three times, by 2029 [while] investing in content and at the same time achieving synergies in other parts of the company,” said the former Mattel boss who joined Ellison’s Skydance last week.

“It’s all part of a multi-year plan that will drive growth and expansion and increase cash flow over time, that will allow us to bring debt down, improve our leverage ratio, and continue to run the business for long-term growth,” he added.

Ellison swatted down the argument that “you can’t actually operate more efficiently while investing more in content.”

“I’d just point to the last year, what we’ve done at Paramount. We’ve overdelivered on synergies — $2.7 billion, basically, by the end of this year from an initial announcement of $2 billion. We did that while doubling the film slate at Paramount from eight films to 15, greenlighting four new and returning series, and growing EBITDA [earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, a key metric] significantly year-over-year.”

So, “you actually can do both things simultaneously. We’ve measured this incredibly carefully,” he said.

The combined entity will have $70 billion in revenue, Ellison noted, and the plans is to ultimately grow to “a $10 billion-dollar cash flow company … We absolutely have the ability to manage the debt and de-lever while investing for growth.”

They’re going to Disneyland!

Abbott Elementary will film its milestone 100th episode inside the park this month, Deadline has learned. Sources tell us that the episode will air in December and serve as the Season 6 fall finale.

Disney declined to comment.

Achieving a triple-digit episode count has never been an easy feat in television, and it is even rarer these days, so it makes sense that the network and the producers would want to go all out for such an occasion. It’s also completely in line with the direction the show has already been going in recent seasons, finding more and more excuses to get both the teachers and the students outside of the halls of Abbott Elementary.

In Season 5, the story took everyone to an abandoned mall for several weeks due to maintenance issues at the school, and the show took on its biggest feat yet when it filmed at a live Phillies game.

It’s quite common for Disney series, and ABC comedies in particular, to film inside the park. Modern Family featured a Disneyland trip in its third season, but it wasn’t tied to a specific milestone and came well before the series’ 100th episode. Instead, it coincided with the park’s 24-hour Leap Day event.

Disney also filmed episodes of The Goldbergs and George Lopez at the California-based park as well. There’s also been plenty of shows to film at Disney World in Florida, including Family Matters, Full House and Roseanne.

Skydance CEO David Ellison said the newly merged company will be in “the business of rebuilding trust” after the bruising battle to bring together Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery.

The year-long saga was one of a handful of topics addressed by Ellison and Co-CEO Ynon Kreiz during a press event held Tuesday at the Paramount lot in L.A. The merger officially closed a few hours prior to the gathering.

“This was a turbulent process and, at times, an ugly process,” Ellison said of the period when Paramount outmaneuvered Netflix and Comcast and settled two antitrust lawsuits before closing the $110 billion deal.

With the deal now official, Skydance must “turn the page and make sure that we are in the business of rebuilding trust.”

Executing the goals of the merger, as well as fulfilling the terms of a consent decree reached between Skydance and the plaintiffs who sued to block the deal will help restore belief in the company, Ellison added. With regard to releasing at least 30 films in theaters per year, for example (one of the terms of the consent decree), “the only way you can do that is the creative community coming together,” he added. “When we follow through on all those promises, that’s how we will rebuild trust.”

Asked about whether he felt stung by the attacks on him personally by opponents of the deal, including the thousands of members of the creative community who signed a petition against it, Ellison recalled his history in the business. The onetime actor began producing in his 20s and started work on his production company, Skydance, about 16 years ago, he said.

“I was a big part of that community,” he said of the creative realm, contrasting that with the 14 months he has been a CEO of a large media company. “For more than 15 years, I was an on-set producer” on Skydance projects like Top Gun: Maverick and recent installments in the Mission: Impossible franchise, Ellison reminded the audience. “So, I love this community. I have really good relationships with this community, and I understand that even people who are friends oppose this merger.”

In addition to the merger process, Ellison and Kreiz spoke about the company’s formidable pile of debt, nearly $80 billion worth, as well as plans for streaming, cable TV and film. In all, the on-the-record remarks lasted about 30 minutes and were followed by a larger off-the-record mixer with the media involving additional Skydance executives. The execs sent a hefty memo to employees laying out goals and followed up by convening a town hall.

Notably, the significant layoffs expected at Skydance in order to pay down its debt did not surface as a topic during the media Q&A.

In expanding on his personal experience on the opposite end of his former brothers and sisters in the creative ranks, Ellison zoomed out to the circumstances in the entertainment industry, arguing that the situation required bold action. As Netflix, YouTube, Apple and Amazon steadily began to cut into traditional Hollywood’s revenue streams, the industry was too complacent, he argued. That set the stage for Skydance to take over the much larger Paramount and then make a play for Warner Bros.

“How we got here to a place where Paramount could be acquired, and Warner Brothers could be acquired, is the businesses didn’t disrupt themselves over a decade ago,” Ellison said. “They allowed Netflix to disrupt their business. They allowed Amazon Prime Video to come and disrupt their business. They didn’t transform, and they held on to the past for too long. And, you know, it is a certainty that if you don’t disrupt your business, somebody else will do it.”

The Skydance merger, he said, “is the solution to basically, I believe, that problem.” Combining streaming services and franchise properties will make Skydance “able to compete with the Disneys and Netflixes and Amazons and anybody in the world.”

In that context, he continued, “I think I understand” the wariness of the merger. “I think if you’re being intellectually honest, you need to zoom out and to see that the symptoms of this go back a long time. And when you start asking yourself, what was the alternative? And I believe this genuinely, as somebody who I’ve spent my entire life in this business. I went to film school at USC. I spent 16 years building Skydance. I do genuinely believe this is the best outcome for the industry. I think we will deliver for the creative community. I think we’ll deliver for our shareholders. And the best I can say to our detractors is: Give us time, and we’ll prove it.”