There's a specific type of person in Hollywood you need to know about.
He didn't come from nothing. He didn't sleep in his car or eat ramen for years waiting for his shot. He's Larry Ellison's son — the Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, one of the richest men on the planet. David Ellison grew up with swimming pools, horses, and a blank check already made out in his name.
That doesn't mean he's stupid. It means he's played the game with safety nets that 99% of Hollywood producers would never get.
And now he wants to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.
The Mission That Never Ends
Nearly six months ago, Ellison — CEO of Paramount Skydance since he engineered the merger of the two companies last August — sent an unsolicited offer to WBD. Warner was already in talks with Netflix, which wanted to scoop up the studio and its premium streaming assets. Ellison barged in with a hostile bid, got invited back to the table with a seven-day window, and this week upped his offer to buy all of WBD outright.
There's a simple reason for all of this: Warner Bros. was the second most profitable studio at the domestic box office last year. Paramount came in fourth.
Ellison knows exactly what he's buying. Or thinks he does.
Tom Cruise Is a Crutch, Not a Strategy
Here's the problem no suit on CNBC is going to tell you: Skydance's track record in film is, to put it charitably, uneven.
Out of nearly 30 films released over the past twenty years, only five have grossed more than $200 million domestically. Five.
And the company's six biggest global hits? All of them starred Tom Cruise.
Top Gun: Maverick ($1.4 billion). Five Mission: Impossible films. It's basically a one-man operation — and that man is 62 years old and starting to talk about a "final mission."
Meanwhile, Disney has released six billion-dollar films since 2021. Warner had Barbie. Universal had Super Mario.
Skydance had… Transformers: Rise of the Beasts ($441 million worldwide) and Terminator Genisys ($440 million). Films that cost a fortune and delivered B-movie returns.
That's not a studio strategy. That's a dependency.
What Warner Is Actually Worth
Paul Dergarabedian of Comscore said the obvious thing elegantly: whoever lands Warner Bros. adds "enormous firepower" in terms of brand identity and revenue potential.
Translation from corporate-speak: Warner has a catalog that would make the Vatican jealous. Batman. Superman. Harry Potter. Lord of the Rings. Bugs Bunny, for God's sake. It's a vault of intellectual property built over a hundred years.
Ellison isn't buying a studio. He's trying to buy a legacy — the kind of thing you can't build from scratch, no matter how much money your dad has.
In that sense, the acquisition logic is solid. If you have a weak track record developing original franchises, you buy whoever already has the franchises. It's what Taleb would call reducing your exposure to your own systemic incompetence.
The Problem Is Netflix Wants It Too
Netflix is on the other side of this table. The company that spent years torching the traditional theatrical model — bypassing cinemas, prioritizing streaming, treating box office like a second-tier metric — now wants a real movie studio.
The irony is delicious.
And it puts Ellison in an awkward spot: he represents the traditional model, the theatrical circuit, the summer blockbuster. Netflix represents the disruption he spent years pushing back against. But they both want the same thing.
Who wins this fight? Probably whoever is willing to pay more — and that's where Larry Ellison's wallet enters the picture.
The Point Everyone Is Missing
David Ellison may very well win this war for Warner Bros. The money is real, the strategic logic exists, and buying established assets instead of building from scratch is often the smarter move in the entertainment business.
But here's the question nobody is asking:
When you buy a company to compensate for your own weakness, do you solve the problem — or do you just buy more time before that weakness shows up at a much larger scale?
Buffett bought companies with durable competitive advantages. He didn't buy companies to hide the fact that his didn't have any.
Will David Ellison prove he's a real operator, or will he be just another heir who confused a blank check with talent?
Warner Bros. will deliver the verdict. It just won't be quick — and it's going to cost a fortune either way.
