The deal that reshaped Hollywood is finally done — and Wall Street isn't celebrating. Paramount Skydance's $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery officially closed on Tuesday, merging HBO, CNN, Warner Bros. studios and DC with CBS, Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon and MTV under a single new roof: a company now called simply Skydance.

The newly combined business began trading on the New York Stock Exchange this week under the ticker SKYD, replacing Paramount's old PSKY listing on the Nasdaq. It has not been a smooth debut. Shares slid roughly 3% on their first day of trading Tuesday, then tumbled further Wednesday — down about 6.7% to close near $8.89, according to market data, as investors kept digesting the scale of debt taken on to fund the purchase.

A long, bruising road to the altar

The agreement was struck back in February, after Netflix walked away from a bidding war and declined to match Paramount's $31-per-share cash offer, according to the original deal terms filed with the SEC. From there it became one of the most contested media mergers in years, drawing an antitrust lawsuit from a coalition of state attorneys general. CNBC's timeline of the saga notes the companies only secured court approval of a settlement — built around "behavioral" remedies rather than a breakup — in the weeks before closing.

"WE LOOK FORWARD TO WORKING WITH PARAMOUNT TO COMPLETE THIS HISTORIC TRANSACTION," Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav said when the two sides first struck their agreement.

David Ellison remains chairman and CEO of the combined company, while former Mattel chief Ynon Kreiz has stepped in as co-CEO overseeing day-to-day integration of the two sprawling media empires, a structure Deadline reported alongside the news that the combined company starts life carrying roughly $80 billion in debt. A new board was also seated at closing, including Apple board veteran Laurene Powell Jobs and former Activision Blizzard chief Bobby Kotick.

That debt load is exactly what's spooking traders. Analysts at Barclays cut their price target on the stock to $7 from $8 this week while maintaining an "underweight" rating, even as the broader Street consensus sits at a more neutral "hold." The company priced tens of billions in new notes and loans in recent weeks to finance the purchase, a package that at one point exceeded Paramount's entire market value before the deal closed.

For now, Skydance controls a library of more than 15,000 film and TV titles, sports rights spanning the NFL, UFC, Champions League and Olympics, and a footprint in more than 200 countries — but it will have to prove to investors it can manage the bill that came with buying it all.