Paramount-WBD 2027 movie slate could dominate. Can it sustain?

Hollywood could soon have a new king of the box office.

With Paramount Skydance set to take over Warner Bros. Discovery, the combined film studios could dominate the theatrical slate.

Paramount CEO David Ellison has repeatedly promised not to pull back on production from either studio, with the goal of making 30 movies a year — 15 from Paramount and 15 from Warner Bros. The pending transaction, with an enterprise value of $111 billion, must still win regulatory approval both in the U.S. and in Europe. 

As the current 2027 slate stands, the combination of WBD and Paramount would result in 26 theatrical releases. However, additions to that calendar could come as soon as April at the annual CinemaCon conference in Las Vegas.

This behemoth of a slate is dominated by Warner Bros. titles, and it’s likely that those films would account for the bulk of ticket sales.

The studio is set to release films from major franchises including Godzilla-Kong, Superman, Batman, Minecraft, The Conjuring universe, Gremlins and Lord of the Rings.

Meanwhile, Paramount will have new entries for Sonic the Hedgehog, Paranormal Activity, A Quiet Place and its animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchises.

While Paramount’s franchises are popular and have generated solid ticket sales at the box office, its major releases in 2027 are smaller budget features. In fact, no film in any of those four franchises has generated more than $350 million globally, according to data from Comscore. But with smaller budgets, they don’t have to in order to be profitable.

Warner Bros.’ part of the slate, on the other hand, has bigger budget features that in the past have generated bigger box office returns. The most recent Godzilla-Kong film generated $572 million globally, 2025’s “The Conjuring: Last Rites” tallied nearly $500 million, “The Batman” took in $772 million and “A Minecraft Movie” nearly hit $1 billion.

“When you look at the films on the horizon from the PAR/WBD combo it is most impressive,” Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Comscore, told CNBC. “And it may not be an overstatement to say that that slate could indeed have the potential to generate the biggest single studio box office in 2027.”

The Warner Bros. movie studio is a big part of why Ellison was so committed to winning over WBD’s board and its shareholders in a bidding war against Comcast and Netflix. Last year, Warner Bros. was the second-highest grossing studio at the domestic and global box office. Paramount was fifth.

Disney has long held the box office heavyweight title, although it was briefly overthrown in 2023 by Universal. Warner and Universal have jockeyed between second and third position, with Sony, Lionsgate and Paramount falling in line behind them.