Paramount CEO David Ellison is trying to do something that no other studio has done in the modern age of cinema — release 30 films annually.

Ellison once again promised this theatrical feat in front of thousands of exhibitors at CinemaCon earlier this month. Applause erupted from the crowd after he made the pronouncement.

But privately, movie theater operators have expressed concerns and skepticism about the proposed future slate of films. While a massive string of releases would help cinemas, companies doubt he will be able to follow through on the promise.

His 30-film plan would hinge on Paramount receiving regulatory approval for its proposed merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, which the latter company’s shareholders approved last week. Ellison noted that each studio would produce 15 films a year.

However, Ellison has not provided many details about those 30 releases, and it’s not clear how he would hit the ambitious goal. Representatives for Paramount did not reply to CNBC’s request for comment.

It’s unclear if all of the films would have wide releases (meaning they eventually play in at least 1,500 theaters, though the typical benchmark is 2,000). It’s also not certain whether the company will count films it distributes but doesn’t produce as part of this figure, or how many of those proposed titles will be considered tentpole blockbusters.

Movie theater operators and industry experts are skeptical that Paramount would be able to sustain a 30-film slate after the initial merger. After all, part of the consolidation process is eliminating redundancies, which inevitably leads to layoffs as well as cost-cutting measures that often result in fewer productions.

“When it comes to traditional brand-new wide release films, 30 movies a year is a lofty plan given that most distributors are releasing on average anywhere from 10 to 15 wide releases each year,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of market trends at Comscore.

In fact, in the last 25 years, no studio has released 30 films in a single year. The combination of 20th Century Fox and Searchlight came close in 2006 when the studios had 25 wide releases, according to data from Comscore.

The data also show that when studios have merged in the past, the result has been fewer theatrical releases, not more.

Prior to acquiring 21st Century Fox and its studio assets, Disney was averaging 12 films a year dating back to 2000. Meanwhile, the combined efforts of 20th Century Fox and Searchlight averaged 16 films during that same time. Not including 2020, in which theatrical releases were impacted by pandemic-related cinema closures, Disney has averaged around 13 films a year following the 2019 merger.

The line chart shows the annual film releases by Disney and 20th Century between 2000 and 2019…

The NFL and Paramount Skydance‘s renewal talks on a deal to keep the league’s Sunday games on CBS are beginning to take shape, CNBC has learned.

NFL and CBS executives are negotiating a price increase, with a bid-ask spread midpoint around 50% or 60%, according to two people familiar with the negotiations, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. CBS currently pays around $2.1 billion a year, on average, for its Sunday afternoon games, CNBC has previously reported. A 50% increase would mean CBS would pay more than $3 billion in its next deal.

In return for the increased revenue, the NFL would eliminate the opt-out clause after the 2029-30 season that it put in its original deal with Paramount, part of an 11-year agreement that runs through the end of the 2033-34 season. That clause would have given the league the chance to walk away early.

CBS would begin paying the new fee as soon as next season for the next eight years for the same package of games.

Paramount’s adjusted projection for its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for 2026 is $3.6 billion. If Paramount’s merger with Warner Bros. Discovery is approved by regulators, the combined company would have an adjusted EBITDA projection of $18 billion, Paramount Chief Financial Officer Dennis Cinelli told investors this month.

“We have a phenomenal relationship with the NFL, and we anticipate that continuing for the foreseeable future,” Paramount CEO David Ellison told CNBC earlier this month. “They are one of our most important partners, and we plan for them to stay one of our most important partners, having just delivered a historic season in partnership with them. And, you know, ongoing negotiations, we’re not really in a position where we can comment. I promise we’ll share something as soon as we have something to say.”

Comcast‘s NBCUniversal, Amazon Prime Video and Fox are also subject to the 2029-30 opt-out clause in their deals. Disney‘s ESPN and ABC have until 2031.

The league has chosen to begin negotiating with Paramount’s CBS before any of its other media partners because a change-of-control provision — stemming from Skydance Media’s acquisition of Paramount Global — allows the NFL to break its deal by 2027.

The NFL might negotiate with Fox next after CBS because the terms of the deal should be similar — both companies own Sunday afternoon packages, one of the people familiar with the matter said.

Fox currently pays slightly more than CBS for its package of games — about $2.2 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. Fox will “certainly look to [be] continuing that mutually beneficial relationship going forward” with…

Paramount+ and HBO Max will be combined into one streaming service if regulators approve Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount CEO David Ellison said on a conference call Monday.

A combined service would have about 200 million subscribers given existing totals, Ellison said during his company’s investor call about the WBD transaction. Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery said last week they had struck an agreement to sell WBD for $31 per share after Netflix backed out of the prolonged bidding war.

Paramount executives didn’t offer any details Monday on how the company may price a combined service or what it would be called. Still, Ellison said he wouldn’t disrupt the HBO brand.

“HBO should stay HBO,” he said, citing its long history of quality programming.

HBO is likely to be a sub-brand within the larger service, according to a person familiar with Paramount’s plans. HBO is currently run by Casey Bloys, whose contract runs out in 2027, another person said. Bloys declined to comment.

Paramount also touted the strength of its sports offering on a combined service, bringing together TNT Sports with CBS Sports.

Paramount executives said they haven’t heard anything from regulators to signal that the breadth of their sports offerings — which would include March Madness, NFL, MLB, NHL, Nascar, French Open, The Masters, college football and more — would trigger any antitrust concerns.

After AT&T acquired Time Warner in 2018, renaming it WarnerMedia, executives launched HBO Max in 2020 in an attempt to add heft and more subscribers.

Three years later, after AT&T divested WarnerMedia and merged it with Discovery, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav renamed the service Max to showcase the addition of Discovery’s programming to the service.

That decision was reversed last year, when Zaslav and Bloys decided to revert back to the HBO Max name to highlight the strength of HBO’s programming.

A day after Paramount Skydance emerged as the winner to take over fellow media giant Warner Bros. Discovery, questions are mounting about the companies’ regulatory path forward.

The WBD board said on Thursday that Paramount’s revised $31-per-share offer was superior to an existing bid from Netflix, prompting the streamer to announce that it was walking away from the deal entirely and clearing the way for Paramount.

Paramount’s raised offer — up from $30 per share — was the latest in a series of moves it made after it launched a hostile bid late last year to buy WBD. It had initially lost out on a bidding war to Netflix, which offered $27.75 per share.

Paramount’s latest bid also included a $7 billion breakup fee if the deal doesn’t win regulatory approval. And according to a Friday filing, it has already paid the $2.8 billion breakup fee that WBD owed to Netflix if the deal fell through.

But media industry experts said it’s looking more likely that the Paramount deal will get through government scrutiny than it did when Netflix was in the picture.

Though Netflix executives had said they were “highly confident” that their deal would win approval, the merger would have brought together two top streaming services — Netflix and Paramount+ — and could have potentially raised prices for consumers and decreased competition.

In early December, Trump said the Netflix-WBD deal “could be a problem” because of the increased market share Netflix would gain, saying he would be involved. He walked back those comments earlier this month, saying the deal would be at the sole discretion of the Department of Justice.

And while the size of a combined Netflix and WBD entity was one of the companies’ largest antitrust obstacles, that issue could still be raised for Paramount.

Both Paramount and WBD have sprawling portfolios of TV networks, in addition to Paramount+ hitting 78.9 million subscribers, according to its most recent earnings report, and HBO Max counting 131.6 million subscribers through the end of 2025.

Paramount executives argued one of the pros of their offer was that a deal with the media company would garner less government scrutiny. Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison’s father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, is known to have close relations with President Donald Trump.

Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is backing the Paramount deal, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Still, Paramount’s proposed deal had come under criticism for potentially being funded by the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia; Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; and Qatar. The company has previously said that those entities have agreed to…

The Warner Bros. Discovery board may have enriched its shareholders Thursday when it chose Paramount Skydance‘s acquisition offer over Netflix‘s, but it also terrified a lot of its employees.

While some of those people own WBD shares and may prefer the financials of Paramount’s $31-per-share bid to Netflix’s $27.75-per-share offer, CNBC spoke to 10 WBD employees in a variety of different roles at the company. All 10, who asked not to be named for fear of potential backlash, expressed concerns about potential job losses and questions of who would ultimately run their divisions if Paramount and WBD are eventually merged.

“It’s fair to say people are deflated by the news,” said one long-term WBD executive.

Nonetheless, a WBD-Paramount merger “is not a done deal,” as California Attorney General Rob Bonta said yesterday.

The transaction must gain regulatory approval both in the U.S. and in Europe. WBD CEO David Zaslav acknowledged at an all-hands meeting Friday that the deal may still be blocked and expressed sympathy for those experiencing a sense of whiplash going from Netflix to Paramount, according to people familiar with the matter.

“The deal may not close. If it doesn’t close, we get $7 billion, and we get back to work,” Zaslav said, according to leaked audio provided to Business Insider.

Still, several WBD employees told CNBC they wished Netflix had acquired WBD, citing several factors.

While Paramount and WBD both have core competencies in news, sports, theatrical film and streaming TV, Netflix has far less overlap. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos repeatedly said he planned to leave the WBD business alone, keeping its theatrical business separate from Netflix while also keeping HBO Max as a separate, independent streaming service for the foreseeable future.

Netflix also wasn’t acquiring WBD’s linear cable business with its bid. Employees at CNN, TNT Sports and the old Discovery networks would have remained in their jobs to forge a path as a standalone publicly traded company.

Now, WBD employees are staring at potentially massive job cuts. Paramount executives have previously stated they plan to cut $6 billion by eliminating “duplicative operations” on “back office, finance, corporate, legal, technology, infrastructure, et cetera,” according to Chief Strategy Officer Andy Gordon. Both WBD and Paramount have already gone through thousands of job cuts in recent years.

There are also questions about culture and leadership. While Mark Thompson currently runs CNN, Bari Weiss is the editor-in-chief at CBS News and could plausibly have CNN added to her purview.

The Wall Street Journal reported in December that Paramount CEO David Ellison promised President Donald Trump he’d make sweeping changes at CNN if he gained control of the network. Three CNN employees who spoke with CNBC said there’s rampant fear among their colleagues about Weiss making…

Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday said Paramount Skydance had raised its takeover offer to $31 per share, up from $30 per share, in a proposal that could “reasonably be expected” to top an existing deal with Netflix.

Last week, WBD announced it would reengage Paramount in deal talks under a seven-day waiver from Netflix. WBD and Netflix have an agreement to sell the legacy media group’s studio and streaming businesses to the streamer. Paramount is seeking to buy the entirety of WBD.

“Following engagement with PSKY during the seven-day limited waiver period, we received a revised PSKY proposal to acquire WBD, which we are reviewing in consultation with our financial and legal advisors,” WBD said in a statement Tuesday morning. “We will update our shareholders following the Board’s review. The Netflix merger agreement remains in effect, and the Board continues to recommend in favor of the Netflix transaction.”

Later Tuesday, WBD said the amended Paramount offer was for $31 per share, all cash, and included a $7 billion breakup fee in the event the proposed merger doesn’t win regulatory approval. Paramount has also agreed to pay the $2.8 billion breakup fee that WBD would owe Netflix if it were to abandon that deal, as well as a so-called ticking fee tied to delays in getting regulators’ approval, WBD said.

“The Board has not made a determination as to whether the revised PSKY proposal is superior to the merger with Netflix,” it said in a statement. “WBD will engage further with PSKY to determine if a proposal that constitutes a ‘Company Superior Proposal,’ as defined in the Netflix Merger Agreement, can be reached.”

If WBD deems the new Paramount offer superior, Netflix will have four days to improve its previously agreed-upon bid. Netflix agreed to acquire WBD’s studio and streaming assets for $27.75 per share in December, valuing the assets at around $72 billion, with a total enterprise value of approximately $82.7 billion.

Paramount subsequently launched a hostile tender offer to WBD shareholders for $30 per share for all of WBD, which includes linear cable networks such as CNN, TBS, HGTV and TNT and digital assets including Bleacher Report and House of Highlights.

The Warner Bros. Discovery board said Tuesday it continued to advise shareholders not to take action in response to the tender offer.

A combined Paramount-WBD would bring together HBO Max with Paramount+ along with merging two of the five largest movie studios by revenue — Warner Bros. and Paramount Skydance Studios. It would also put CNN and CBS News under one ownership structure.

Both the Netflix-WBD deal and a potential Paramount-WBD merger would need U.S. and European regulatory approval for completion, and both deals have raised antitrust concerns among critics.