Hollywood’s Next Merger Comes With Global Strings Attached

Warner Bros Discovery — Source: NurPhoto / Getty

If you thought Hollywood was running out of big-budget spectacles, think again, because the real action is happening off-screen.

Paramount Skydance, steered by David Ellison, has quietly lined up nearly $24 billion in backing from Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds as it pushes to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.

According to Variety, the money isn’t just coming from anywhere, it’s anchored by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which is kicking in about $10 billion, with additional billions flowing in from state funds in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

That’s a staggering pile of cash, even by Hollywood standards. But the money is only part of the story.

The deal itself is massive: Warner Bros. Discovery carries an enterprise value of roughly $111 billion, and Paramount’s $31-per-share offer was enough to beat out competitors—after Netflix opted not to counter. If regulators sign off, the companies expect to close the deal near the end of 2026.

That “if” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Inside Washington, the mood is… skeptical. The Justice Department isn’t exactly rolling out the red carpet. Acting antitrust chief Omeed Assefi has already made it clear the deal won’t be fast-tracked, with political undertones swirling due to the Ellison family’s ties to President Donald Trump.

And then there’s the foreign money.

Paramount has tried to get ahead of those concerns by structuring the investments so that the Middle Eastern funds hold non-voting stakes with zero governance rights—no board seats, no control. That, the company argues, should keep the deal out of the jurisdiction of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the body that reviews foreign deals for national security risks.

But not everyone is convinced.

A group of Democratic senators is already calling for a deeper probe, urging the FCC to take a hard look at who’s really backing this merger. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal have also criticized the Treasury Department for not initiating a formal national security review.

Meanwhile, the financing picture has had its own twists. Tencent briefly dropped out of the deal amid concerns over foreign ownership—only to reportedly re-enter later with fresh funding.

Hovering over all of this is Larry Ellison, the billionaire patriarch backing the deal with up to $46.7 billion of his own money. Thanks to the influx of foreign capital, he may not have to spend quite as much—but his influence over the deal remains enormous.

In other words, this isn’t just a merger. It’s a high-stakes collision of entertainment, geopolitics, and money at a scale that could reshape Hollywood’s power structure.

The final act? That’s up to regulators.

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