Ellison’s New Inner Circle: The Org Chart That Reveals Who Has Power

Palace intrigue is at an all-time high as the new kings of Skydance settle onto their thrones. 

As of week 2, David Ellison has a whopping 15 direct reports, two powerful new lieutenants and one of the most complicated org charts in Hollywood. But if you really want to understand who has power inside the newly merged Skydance, let’s start with two men a lot of Hollywood is just getting to know.

Of course Ynon Kreiz, 61, the former Mattel CEO now charged with helping Ellison run and integrate his sprawling empire as co-CEO, has been a figure adjacent to the studios for decades. The other is president Andy Gordon, longtime Goldman Sachs banker, 62, who met Ellison when the budding studio chief was 28. Gordon is the one who introduced him to RedBird’s Gerry Cardinale — helping set in motion the dealmaking that created this current remix of Skydance (more on the significance of that RedBird relationship below).

Neither Kreiz nor Gordon rose through Hollywood’s traditional studio system, yet both now wield enormous influence over its future.

And beneath them, Hollywood’s more familiar power players — from Casey Bloys and George Cheeks to Channing Dungey, Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein — are staking out their territories, building their teams and figuring out who will control the creative decisions that matter most.

So who has Ellison’s ear? Who actually gets to say yes to a movie or television show? And how rock solid is any of this?

One veteran agent offers a warning about Skydance’s new leadership structure, which just convulsed with Bloys besting Cindy Holland to run Skydance streaming: “None of this is a permanent solution; this is the stutter step before the big step — but nobody knows what the big step will look like.”

That makes the company’s new org chart revealed below far more than a static corporate flowchart — in other words, don’t pin it on your vision board yet. Instead, consider it a first draft of current Skydance 2.0 history.

Below, here’s what to know about who’s up, who’s in and what to know about the new guys calling the shots:

• The org chart: Ellison’s 15 direct reports, who survived the merger and where power is concentrated
• The greenlight question: what happens as Bloys, Cheeks and Dungey establish their new creative territories
• Kreiz’s mandate: the insider-outsider’s path from Endemol to Mattel, and what Ellison is counting on him to deliver
• Gordon’s responsibilities now — and his relationship to RedBird everyone should be watching
• The money and influence: who’s managing the investors, the board, the crushing debt and the financial relationships behind Skydance