One in every of Hollywood’s oldest firms, Paramount International, has agreed to merge with impartial movie studio Skydance Media.
Beneath the deal, Paramount’s non-executive chair Shari Redstone will promote her household’s controlling stake within the firm in a posh transaction that can end in a brand new agency value round $28bn (£21.9bn).
It marks the tip of an period for the Redstone household, whose late patriarch, Sumner Redstone, reworked a sequence of drive-in cinemas into an unlimited media empire.
In addition to Paramount, the group contains the tv networks CBS, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and MTV.
“Our hope is that the Skydance transaction will allow Paramount’s continued success on this quickly altering setting,” Ms Redstone stated in an announcement.
In keeping with the corporate its TV channels have a world attain of over 4.3 billion subscribers throughout greater than 180 nations.
The merger would mix Paramount, dwelling of traditional movies corresponding to Chinatown and Breakfast at Tiffany’s, with its monetary accomplice on a number of current massive releases, together with High Gun: Maverick and Star Trek Into Darkness.
Beneath the settlement, Skydance will make investments round $8bn in Paramount, together with paying $2.4bn for Nationwide Amusements, the agency that controls the group behind names corresponding to CBS and MTV.
Paramount stated it anticipated to shut the deal by the summer time of subsequent yr.
Paramount International traces its origins again greater than a century to the founding of Paramount Footage Company in 1914.
The studio has made many hit movies, together with the Godfather, Star Trek, and Mission: Unattainable sequence.
However the leisure large has struggled over the previous decade. Paramount International’s shares have fallen by greater than 75% within the final 5 years.
Skydance is owned David Ellison, the son of Larry Ellison, who based US expertise large Oracle.
The announcement got here after eight-months of negotiations that noticed Redstone holding talks with a quantity potential companions together with Sony and personal fairness agency Apollo.
In April, Paramount’s chief govt Bob Bakish left the corporate after clashing with Ms Redstone over the deliberate Skydance deal.
The deal comes as the worldwide leisure business is being reworked by the video streaming video revolution.
