I wrote about the leaked Disney memo warning of a “much smaller organization,” scooped Sony and Prime Video’s new Spider-Man shows, and broke down the new overall deals economy.
After months of debating whether Cindy Holland or Casey Bloys would be the exec to lead Paramount-Warners’ streaming future, Hollywood very suddenly has its answer.
Yesterday, Holland stepped down from her role as chair of Paramount’s direct to consumer platforms as HBO chief Bloys is now primed to control Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery’s combined streamer.
The move caps a dignified but intense battle for control between two highly respected executives with equally impressive track records. In the end, Paramount CEO David Ellison — whom people have described as “loyal” — decided that keeping Bloys, a two-decade HBO veteran already with a CEO title at HBO, was more important to the future of the merged company than his two years in the trenches with Holland.
“Ellison is doing the smart thing — he had a temporary fix [with Holland], and now Paramount is going to be a new entity. He has to look at the players and pick the ones who can score,” a former streaming exec tells me. “If you can get the star player in, you have to do that.” Yet, adds a longtime TV exec who has worked with both Bloys and Holland, “Cindy is an outstanding executive, and I thought she was securely part of Ellison’s inner circle — that she’d win out in this battle.”
As I’ve reported, Bloys wasn’t going to settle for anything less than a direct line to Ellison and, per sources familiar with his thinking, the HBO/HBO Max content chief had no intention of accepting a siloed role akin to how John Landgraf operates at Disney — where the FX CEO has his own fiefdom and a direct line to creative chief Dana Walden.
“He’s been saying I want to do it the way I want to do it or I don’t need to do it anymore,” this source says of Bloys, whose lunch with Ted Sarandos certainly raised eyebrows earlier this year and contributed to endless rumors about a possible move to Netflix. “He’s not going to sit in the corner like John Landgraf and run a boutique. He’s going to do it or not do it.”
Holland is the first domino to fall in the merger of Paramount and WBD, which multiple sources expect to close as soon as Tuesday, Oct. 6. Her exit comes as staffers across the industry are on edge as overall industry employment has declined every year since the strikes shut sets down in 2023.
But this downturn is different. During Peak TV’s collapse, much of the pain landed on crews and Hollywood’s middle class while the executive ranks remained relatively protected. This time, the data suggests the C-suite may finally be catching up.
For today, I spoke with agents, managers, executives and an economist about the harsh months ahead — at Paramount-Warners and beyond — and why, after the ice melts, there are causes for optimism and hope.
I’ll cover:
- What’s likely to happen to Holland’s handpicked team
- Ellison’s next executive showdowns to watch
- Who’s getting hit by the first swath of Disney layoffs — and why its long-rumored TV reorg is taking longer
- Why the C-suite is now being pulled into an employment collapse it largely escaped before
- Where opportunity may emerge after the consolidation — and what buyers will actually spend on
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