Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery are no longer separate companies. The $111 billion merger officially closed Tuesday, folding CBS, CNN, HBO Max, Comedy Central, MTV, TBS and the Paramount and Warner Bros. film studios into a single corporation now called Skydance, run by chairman and CEO David Ellison.

Skydance's Class B shares began trading Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker "SKYD," while Warner Bros. Discovery stock ceased trading on Nasdaq the same day. Variety's report on the closing quotes Ellison calling it "a historic day, not just for Skydance but for our entire industry."

A $47 billion bet backed by three sovereign wealth funds

The new Skydance will carry nearly $70 billion in annual revenue — and $80 billion in net debt, the legacy of a deal that took more than a year of bidding, regulatory review and public sparring to complete. The merger was financed in part by $47 billion in Class B common stock from investors including Larry Ellison, RedBird Capital Partners, LionTree, and the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi, according to CNBC's timeline of how the deal came together.

"TODAY IS A HISTORIC DAY, NOT JUST FOR SKYDANCE BUT FOR OUR ENTIRE INDUSTRY."

Leadership changes are already rippling through the combined company. Warner Bros. film executives Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy are departing following the close, while Ellison and incoming leadership named a new executive team last week to run the studio and television operations, according to CNBC's report on the new leadership roster.

The deal reshapes Hollywood's competitive map overnight, combining CBS's broadcast news and sports operations with CNN's cable news franchise and HBO Max's prestige streaming library — all now under one roof, and all now carrying the weight of the industry's biggest media bet of the year. Analysts will be watching closely for signs of how Skydance balances its debt load against continued streaming investment, and whether further leadership or brand consolidation follows in the months ahead.

The combined company inherits an enormous and occasionally overlapping slate: two film studios, two streaming services in Paramount+ and HBO Max, and news operations at both CBS and CNN that will now sit under common corporate ownership for the first time. How Skydance handles that overlap — whether Paramount+ and HBO Max eventually merge into a single streaming product, and whether CBS News and CNN continue operating as fully separate newsrooms — is likely to be one of the defining questions of Ellison's early tenure.

The deal cleared a difficult path to the finish line, surviving competing bids, regulatory scrutiny and public opposition from some employee groups worried about job losses and editorial independence at the news divisions. With the merger now closed and Skydance trading as an independent public company, attention shifts to integration: how quickly leadership consolidates overlapping departments, and how Wall Street grades a media conglomerate carrying $80 billion in debt into an industry still being reshaped by streaming economics.