David Ellison Is Not a Republican or a Democrat But a Movie Lover

In the chorus of dissonant voices we’ve heard in the ongoing Warnermount merger debates, there’s one who’s lingered off to the side, biding his time ahead of his big solo, and that’s David Ellison, chief executive of Paramount Skydance. The proverbial finger that pushed the first domino, Ellison outbid Netflix in an industry play that would disrupt media — Hollywood, movies, news, all of it — without saying much outside of a few prepared statements via representatives or boards or spokespeople. Writing in the New York Times op-ed section on August 4, Ellison chose to defend himself against those who were “happy” to write his story for him.

Despite the state attorneys general suing to stop the merger under anti-monopoly laws and another lawsuit from the Writers Guild of America, Ellison believes that the actual issue people have with his potential leadership is that they don’t know what his politics are. “Unfortunately, I can’t give anyone a view into my heart and mind, but I can share this: I have regularly voted for candidates of both parties; I hold some views that would be called conservative and others that would be called liberal, just like most Americans,” Ellison writes. Regardless of his views, however, he adds that he would run a newsroom “based on facts and truth” and that “great news organizations like CNN and CBS News are here to tell it straight down the middle.” 

News isn’t the only thing on Ellison’s mind. He also wants everyone to know that he loves movies, all kinds of movies, writing that he has “loved film since I was old enough to sit still for one, and scenes from the movies have shaped who I am: a boy riding a bicycle silhouetted against the full moon, twin suns setting over the desert, jets dogfighting off the California coast.” Okay, so boy movies. And though he has doubled Paramount’s output since he took over, Ellison is keenly aware that not all of those boy movies have been hits. “In my own career, G.I. Joe: Retaliation met financial expectations, Top Gun: Maverick exceeded them and Terminator: Dark Fate fell short,” he writes. David Ellison, name a Paramount movie without a gun in it challenge! Quickly!

Ellison knows that people are watching and judging him, as is the nature of a life and position lived so publicly, but that only makes him want to do this work even more. “It’s the audience — the American people — who have the final say in whether a movie succeeds or fails, whether a news organization thrives or withers and therefore whether our industry succeeds or fails,” he writes. An audience can also be made up of state attorneys generals or guild members, all of whom may be suing him to stop this from happening, once and for all.