The billionaire tech heir trying to buy the movie industry — on his father’s dime
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What ownership battle is currently reshaping Hollywood?
This is In Conversation from Apple News. I'm Shamita Basu. Today, how one of the world's wealthiest families is changing Hollywood.
Right now, some of the most valuable movies and TV shows ever made are at the center of an ownership battle. Two companies, Paramount Skydance and Netflix, are fighting for control of Warner Brothers Discovery, the studio that owns HBO, CNN, and a trove of classic films. It's just the latest sign that consolidations are reshaping Hollywood, changing what we watch, how we watch it, and how much we pay.
They obviously, at a basic level, stand to gain one of the most iconic companies in Hollywood history.
That's Reeves Weideman, a features writer for New York Magazine. He recently profiled David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount Skydance and one of the key players in this fight for a huge piece of the media landscape. David is also the son of Larry Ellison, co-founder and longtime CEO of the tech company Oracle and one of the richest people in the world.
Who is David Ellison and what is his connection to the tech industry?
There is no way to separate David Ellison's rise in Hollywood from his father and the impact his father has had on his career, funding his efforts in Hollywood basically throughout the past 20 years from Skydance, the company he ran, and more recently to buying Paramount and now trying to buy Warner Brothers.
Reeves didn't speak directly with David or Larry for this piece, but he did talk to people who know them and who say, despite having a mixed track record, David's passion for the industry is genuine.
He loves movies. He loves the movie business. He wants it to be successful. He wants to build a sustainable company that becomes a real player in Hollywood after years of kind of decline.
So I sat down with Reeves to understand who the Ellisons really are, what they want, and what their growing power could mean for the future of the media and all of us watching now. Let's start with Larry's story, because he's one of those people who is one of the wealthiest in the world. And yet I think a lot of people don't actually know very much about him. He's managed to kind of fly under the radar.
What impact did Larry Ellison have on David's career in Hollywood?
What's Larry's story? Who is he?
Larry has a really interesting background. He was born on the Lower East Side in New York City, given up for adoption by his mother, never met his father, moved to Chicago with his adopted family when he was less than a year old. Larry likes to describe his childhood as kind of rough in some ways. His adopted father would apparently say to Larry pretty regularly as a kid, you're never going to amount to anything. You're no good. Larry, as he built Oracle, the tech company he founded, and as that company grew and grew, he would tell this story over and over again. And the way he described it was that he had all of the disadvantages necessary for success. And what he meant by that is he had all of the innate motivation to prove himself.
How did David Ellison transition from acting to producing?
He didn't grow up wealthy, so he was going out there to build his wealth, to build his reputation, to prove himself to his father. And what's interesting about Larry is he is, in fact, one of the most colorful people in all of Silicon Valley. One of his best friends was Steve Jobs, and Steve described Larry as sort of the poster child for outrageous CEO. He spends money very lavishly on real estate, on giant yachts. He owns an entire Hawaiian island. But the reason he's kind of skated by is Oracle, the company he founded, is without question the most boring company tech company out there. It is not a consumer-facing company like Google or Facebook or even Netflix, like the companies that we're very familiar with.
But Oracle is everywhere. Oracle databases are the backing for basically every large organization in the world.
What is the significance of David's production company, Skydance?
So they've served this sort of crucial role in the rise of the internet, which is one of the reasons Larry has built his wealth. But he hasn't quite gotten the same level of scrutiny just because the company is so different than some of the other tech giants that have grown over the years.
That's fascinating. I was reading a bit about him and he was described in some places as a centi-billionaire, which was actually not a word that I knew that we had invented yet in English.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What ownership battle is currently reshaping Hollywood?
0:04–1:13
2
Who is David Ellison and what is his connection to the tech industry?
1:13–2:24
3
What impact did Larry Ellison have on David's career in Hollywood?
2:24–3:11
4
How did David Ellison transition from acting to producing?
3:11–4:00
5
What is the significance of David's production company, Skydance?
4:00–4:47
6
How did the acquisition of Paramount by David Ellison unfold?
4:47–5:24
7
What are the implications of the Warner Bros. acquisition for the media landscape?
5:24–6:05
8
What does David Ellison ultimately want to achieve in Hollywood?
6:05–26:58
Speakers
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