Tag Archives: David Ellison

Yes, that is at times a simple setting, and sometimes it is more like watching for clarity in a bowl of pea soup. Something that simply isn’t ever happening. As such I tend to stay away from these things. Here I took a dabble for the reason that this most certainly will impact Hogwarts Legacy 2 and that is a troublesome setting. There was a second setting that AOL (via the LA Times) alerted me to. It is ‘Paramount outlines plans for Warner Bros. Cuts’ which we see (at https://www.aol.com/articles/paramount-outlines-plans-warner-bros-172016776.html) I have seen several cut articles pas by my eyes and as such we are given “Many in Hollywood fear Warner Bros. Discovery’s sale will trigger steep job losses — at a time when the industry already has been ravaged by dramatic downsizing and the flight of productions from Los Angeles.” I feel I disagree, but it is a disagreement done via a lack of American business sense and the ‘insight’ that there are too many captains and too many ships. It is like the length of a project has 5 stages, each stage with its own captain, quartermaster and boatswain, whilst these ships require to be moored 5 times which comes with additional costs. It is the perception I see and perhaps I am wrong, but that is the setting that is almost never seen in Canada, the UAE, Saudi Arabia. Not sure about Australia and the United Kingdom, as such the others get a much larger slice of their revenue, hence they can focus on quality, not quantity. 

I’ll admit it is a non-professional view as I am not in that business, me writing a few scripts don’t make me in any way a professional view here. So as we are given and we see “David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance is seeking to allay some of those concerns by detailing its plans to save $6 billion, including job cuts, should Paramount succeed in its bid to buy the larger Warner Bros. Discovery.” Will it work? I honestly don’t know, but this setting is weirding me out especially as we see “Paramount previously disclosed that it would target $6 billion in synergies. And it has stressed the proposed merger would make Hollywood stronger — not weaker. The firm, however, recently acknowledged that it would shave about 10% from program spending should it succeed in combining Paramount and Warner Bros.” We see ‘cutting’, ‘a merger’, ‘shaving’ and that makes Hollywood stronger? I don’t know, but I feel a string sense of doubt. Not merely because of that, but the UK, UAE and Saudi Arabia are fine tuning their own streaming services, their production facilities and distribution channels and I haven’t even considered India in all this. The time for people who want to succeed in Hollywood is over. Hollywood has to content for resources with the UK, Canada, UAE and Saudi Arabia and several of these channels have resources, as such the pond where Hollywood is fishing is a lot smaller and whilst people are ‘cut’ from the business they had, they will look towards the other ponds to see if they can make a living there. The shine of Hollywood stopped shining about 10 years ago and people aren’t catching on. And whilst we see “Paramount said that it would become Hollywood’s biggest spender — shelling out about $30 billion a year on programming.” This setting comes with a counter setting. You see if they don’t make at least $100,000,000,000 from that, the money spenders walk away and that is where the cogs start to hamper work. And at present Paramount had 2 movies in the top 10. Primate which made $23,890,679 and the SpongeBob movie which made $23,410,013. You think this is good? It is an actual question because these two movies made 0.47% of the required revenue. Still think this is a healthy setting? I know there is a lot more, TV series and all kinds of streaming solutions and they do bring in the cash but will it be enough? There is now a lot more than Hollywood and those players are also vying for the same revenue and the people have less to spend. For me it is simple I was only able to afford 4 cinema movies and for now my 2026 budget is limited to The Odyssey and the third dune move at present. And I am not in as bad a setting as many others are and I don’t think that Hollywood is realising this (or they are hiding that ignorance), but the Analysts have another view “Some analysts have wondered whether Paramount would sell one of its most valuable assets — the historic Melrose Avenue movie lot — to raise money to pay down debt that a Warner acquisition would bring.” I have no idea, the moment I hear Melrose, my mind changes settings to Melrose place and that sitcom with Heather Locklear (I was young once) and I have no idea about Hollywood, but the idea that this is an option and still they believe that Hollywood would not become stronger, merely more diverse and that does not translate to strength, it translates to revenue moving into more and smaller buckets. I remain driven into offering my scrips to Dubai except for the NSA heart attack script, I am now working on, which is meant for Canada and optionally Matt Damon’s Artists Equity. Still working on this, but I will finish it within the next few months (two months ahead of schedule, because a rewrite will become essential). 

So whilst I am in no way savvy in the workings of Hollywood, I am well versed in Business Intelligence and the settings I am seeing do not add up (to me at least). It is not entirely without doubt that this might be a setting that these studios are setting themselves up for a non-administration time and therefor much more abled to be hiding certain matters. Because stronger and the diminishing parts we see don’t add up. It only makes sense if certain players aren’t making the numbers they are supposed to be making. But perhaps I am the eternal sarcasm driven entity in this. 

And beyond what we see now with “Paramount also has filed proxy materials to ask Warner shareholders to reject the Netflix deal at an upcoming stockholder meeting. Earlier this month, Netflix amended its bid, converting its $27.75-a-share offer to all-cash to defuse some of Paramount’s arguments that it had a stronger bid. Should Paramount win Warner Bros., it would need to line up $94.65 billion in debt and equity.” The numbers might be adding up, but I have some doubts here, but it is Hollywood, who do I know about that place (answer: zilch)

Have a great day you all, its almost Thursday now, merely 300 seconds remaining.