Skydance’s Original(s) Sin: Firing Its Hitmakers

Let’s start with Ankler Rule No. 1: This is a business of hits.

So when it comes to Skydance and David Ellison, we can look at executive moves, greenlights, deal memos, org charts and everything else — none of that ultimately tells us much about whether leadership’s choices will lead to what matters most.

Sometimes the most brilliant teams of executives — with IP stacked to the heavens — will bring down turkeys as far as the eye can see; other times, the biggest clown car full of bozos you’ve ever seen in the most confused organization in the world will have an unholy knack for hits.

You don’t know until you know. And with Skydance, we won’t know for a while.

Also, it needs to be said — we don’t just want Skydance to succeed; we need Skydance to succeed.  

It might not be too much to say the survival of the studio world and industrial production as we know it hangs on Skydance succeeding. So all analysis — here, and from this day forward, so I don’t have to repeat this in every column — comes from a place of holding my breath, praying this thing works out.

So. 

That said. 

What do we know about Skydance right now, based on its leadership moves and frequent gestures toward a plan — 30 movies, multiple great brands, even greater debt?

One of the clearest signals came almost immediately: Skydance fired Warner Bros. film chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy.

That decision tells us a lot about what the new owners seem to believe is wrong with Warner Bros. — and what kind of movie studio they want to build instead.

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The Mike & Pam Question

We don’t yet know what Skydance’s two-studio version of its plan will be, but we know it won’t be a Mike and Pam venture.

Not just because Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy won’t be there to execute it, but because Skydance has made it clear: By removing the Warner Bros. film chiefs, they seem to be slamming the door on the days of wild spending on originals. (“Originals” is the dirtiest word in the postmodern, big-tech-influenced Hollywood lexicon.)

But before we weigh the merits of that stance, let’s consider how true the allegations against Mike and Pam are, before these charges harden into conventional wisdom.