David Ellison Brings in Mattel’s Ynon Kreiz to Help Lead $110 Billion Warner Bros....

For the past two years, David Ellison has been assembling the pieces of a media empire. As he prepares to take control of a combined Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, he is bringing in an experienced entertainment executive to help manage the sprawling company and address a question that has followed his aggressive expansion: can the 43-year-old technology executive turn a series of acquisitions into a functioning media business?

According to CNBC, Ynon Kreiz, the outgoing chief executive of Mattel, will become co-CEO of the combined Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery when the merger closes on Tuesday. The new company, which will simply be called Skydance, will bring together Paramount and Warner Bros.' film studios, CBS, a collection of major pay-TV networks including CNN, TNT, MTV and BET, and streaming platforms Paramount+ and HBO Max.

The appointment gives Ellison a heavyweight operator with three decades of experience across media, entertainment and consumer businesses. It also establishes a clearer division of responsibilities at a company facing one of the most complicated integrations in the history of the modern media industry.

Ellison will oversee long-term strategy, creative direction, technology and capital allocation, while Kreiz will be responsible for day-to-day management and integrating the combined businesses.

That structure matters significantly because Ellison's rise has been remarkably fast. Less than 18 months ago, he was running Skydance, a film production company whose major successes included the Tom Cruise-led Mission: Impossible franchise and "Top Gun: Maverick." By August 2025, he had completed the roughly $8 billion acquisition of Paramount. About a month later, he began pursuing Warner Bros. Discovery, eventually prevailing in a bidding contest that produced a transaction valued at roughly $110 billion on an enterprise basis.

The scale of the resulting company is dramatically different from the business Ellison previously ran.

Kreiz's appointment therefore gives Skydance an executive whose job is not simply to help formulate the next strategy, but to execute an integration involving studios, television networks, streaming services, employees, technology infrastructure and billions of dollars in expected cost savings.

"We view the appointment of Ynon Kreiz positively, as his operating experience and brand/IP focus uniquely position him to help lead the integration of Paramount Skydance and WBD and build the combined business into a best-in-class content and IP platform," Matthew Condon, an analyst at Citizens Bank, wrote in a research note.

Yet Wall Street is not unanimous that Kreiz is the ideal choice for the assignment. Morningstar senior equity analyst Matthew Dolgin noted that Kreiz has extensive media and entertainment experience before joining Mattel, but questioned whether his background makes him the best possible person to manage the integration.

"He undoubtedly is an experienced hand who fills a void that had been present, leaving the firm better positioned with him, in our view, than it was without him," Dolgin wrote. "Though his title is co-CEO, we view Kreiz as a chief operating officer."

The Mattel Turnaround and The Limits of The Barbie Model

Kreiz arrives with a record that makes the choice understandable.

Before joining Mattel in 2018, he was chairman and CEO of Maker Studios, which was sold to Walt Disney in 2014. He previously served as chairman and CEO of Endemol Group, one of the world's largest independent television production companies, and earlier co-founded Fox Kids Group Europe, which was acquired by Disney in 2002.

At Mattel, he inherited a company that had gone through four CEOs in four years. Its major brands, including Fisher-Price, Barbie and American Girl, were struggling with changing consumer tastes, while the bankruptcy of Toys R Us had dealt another blow to the toy industry.

Kreiz responded with a restructuring that focused on reducing complexity, cutting costs, improving cash generation and strengthening the balance sheet.

"Mattel had like a four-year revenue downturn, gone from being quite profitable to losing money, and he turned that around in like two years," said Eric Handler, managing director and senior media and entertainment analyst at Roth Capital Partners.

Mattel eliminated numerous stock-keeping units, rationalized business lines, restructured its supply chain, closed manufacturing facilities, and reduced its workforce by 2,200 employees. The company also cut roughly $1 billion in costs and prioritized free cash flow and deleveraging.

"He got off to a really great start [at Mattel] because he did some structural improvements," said Gerrick Johnson, equity research analyst at Seaport Research Partners. "They eliminated a lot of SKUs, rationalized the business lines … They did a great job of cutting like $1 billion worth of cost right out of the gate, becoming more flexible, quicker to market."

That experience could be directly relevant to Skydance, which has promised $6 billion in cost savings within three years of closing the merger.

But Kreiz's Mattel record also comes with a complication. His most visible entertainment bet, the creation of an in-house film division designed to turn Mattel intellectual property into movie franchises, produced "Barbie," one of the biggest box-office successes of 2023.

The Greta Gerwig-directed film, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, generated more than $1.4 billion globally and gave the Barbie brand enormous cultural visibility.

The financial benefit to Mattel, however, was considerably less spectacular than the movie's box-office performance. Mattel reported a $150 million revenue boost in fiscal 2023, while the company generated an incremental $90 million in operating profit that year.

"You can't argue that Barbie wasn't anything but a tremendous success," Johnson said. "But for Mattel, it didn't translate to the bottom line. Mattel that year generated an incremental $90 million in operating profit, so that's like 13% growth on a consolidated basis with the 'Barbie' movie. Barbie revenue was up 3% that year, but Barbie revenue since is down 22%. … So, a massive deterioration of that Barbie brand since."

Some analysts argue that the emphasis on entertainment and intellectual property came at a cost elsewhere in Mattel's business.

"Post-Covid, earnings have been very stagnant," Johnson said. "The top line has flatlined. Margin growth has stalled. Innovation has stalled, and it just seems like a classic, you know, taking the eye off the ball."

Morningstar senior analyst Jaime Katz similarly wrote that Mattel shares had "done a round trip under Kreiz's tenure." The stock roughly doubled to the mid-$20 range during his tenure before falling back toward $15.

"Kreiz's strategy to establish Mattel as an IP-driven, high-performing toy company has largely fallen flat," Katz said.

That history creates an interesting parallel with Skydance. Ellison is also building a company around the idea that valuable intellectual property can be leveraged across film, television and streaming. The difference is that Skydance will have to do so while integrating two major legacy media companies and carrying a much larger debt burden.

A $79 Billion Debt Load Raises The Stakes

The merger is expected to require two to three years to fully integrate, according to Needham analyst Laura Martin.

During that period, Ellison and Kreiz will have to deliver the promised $6 billion in savings while managing roughly $79 billion of debt once the transaction is complete. Paramount Skydance has indicated that most of the savings will come from nonlabor costs, although the precise sources of those savings remain unclear.

Martin expects the eventual synergies could exceed the $6 billion target.

The combined company could also use the merger to rationalize its streaming operations. Ellison has previously said he intends to combine Paramount+ and HBO Max into a single consumer platform, potentially eliminating duplicated technology, infrastructure and other operating costs.

But cost-cutting cannot come without regard to the company's production obligations.

Skydance will control both the Warner Bros. and Paramount film studios as well as its DC studio, giving it an enormous portfolio of franchises and production capabilities. At the same time, as part of an agreement resolving a lawsuit brought by a group of state attorneys general seeking to block the merger on antitrust grounds, Paramount Skydance agreed to release at least 30 films annually in theaters in 2027 and 2028 and at least 32 films each year from 2029 through 2031.

That creates a difficult equation. The company is expected to extract billions of dollars in efficiencies while maintaining a substantial theatrical output and investing in the intellectual property that is supposed to underpin its future. CBS adds another constraint. Skydance has agreed to prohibit writer layoffs on the broadcast team for at least five years. At the same time, a report from the Department of Economic Opportunity in Los Angeles estimates that 4,500 film and television jobs in the county could be at risk over three years as the companies combine their operations.

The result is a business in which Kreiz's traditional strengths in restructuring and operational discipline will be tested against the demands of a media industry where cutting too deeply can damage the very creative assets that generate long-term value.

"It's an excellent choice for Paramount," Handler said.

But the scale of the assignment is unlike the Mattel turnaround. Kreiz will be responsible for integrating businesses built around different corporate cultures, distribution systems and economic models, while Ellison remains focused on the longer-term creative and technological direction of the company.

"He's got a big task ahead of him," Handler said. "You know, there's a huge amount of debt, a massive integration situation that he's facing. But I think he'll do a great job with it."