Paramount Skydance talking to Apollo, buyout firms to join possible $60B Warner Bros. Discovery bid: sources

Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison is in talks with major private equity firms to join his possible bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery – a megadeal that could cost upwards of $60 billion, The Post has learned.

Potential investors weighing the WBD deal include Apollo Global Management – the buyout giant that in spring 2024 had made a $26 billion, debt-fueled offer for Paramount before ultimately losing that race to Skydance, people with direct knowledge of the situation said.

Led by billionaire CEO Marc Rowan, Apollo already owns more than a dozen TV stations through its Cox Media Group as well as a major stake in Legendary Entertainment, a movie and TV production company.

Apollo appears closest to helping Ellison with the bid, sources said. Billionaire Stephen Schwarzman’s Blackstone, which owns stakes in Hollywood firms including Candle Media – the outfit founded by ex-Disney bigwigs Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs – has investigated a possible financing role but as of now not interested in participating, sources tell The Post.

“These companies bring a lot to the table since they own stakes in Hollywood properties and have a lot of money,” said one source with direct knowledge of the negotiations.

A Skydance spokeswoman had no comment; reps for Apollo and Blackstone had no comment.

Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison is looking for fresh sources of capital as his dad Larry Ellison – who recently became the world’s second-richest person behind Elon Musk as stock of his software giant Oracle soared on forecasts of massive AI profits – appears nevertheless to have a limited appetite for media deals, insiders said.

The leak of David’s intentions for an all-cash bid for WBD came on the heels of his $8 billion purchase of Paramount – a 13-month saga between him, Shari Redstone and the Trump administration that finally closed in August after 13 months. 

Then, only a month later, news leaked that David Ellison was exploring an all cash-bid for WBD, which in addition to the Warner Bros. studio owns HBO and CNN. But since then there has been eerie silence – and it’s because of the funding questions, insiders said. 

Meanwhile, the chatter about David Ellison leaning on his father’s checkbook is growing. On Monday, Paramount Skydance revealed it paid a whopping $150 million to buy the Free Press, a right-leaning website that generates lots of buzz thanks to its voluble editor, journalist Bari Weiss, but just around $15 million in annual revenue.

Weiss will be running the website in her new role, and will also bring the same editorial discretion she employed at the Free Press – critical coverage of woke culture and support of Israel – as editor-and-chief of CBS. 

But other potential suitors balked at Weiss’s asking price, believing the Free Press’s news coverage was not broad enough to attract a mass audience and justify such a high valuation.

“Look, the WBD deal might happen or it might not,” said one veteran media analyst who asked not to be named. “But one thing I don’t see any time soon is Larry Ellison selling $60 billion of his Oracle stock to buy WBD.”

Simple math shows why David Ellison needs his father’s cash or some from outside investors. His new company, Paramount Skydance, or PSKY, has just around $2.75 billion in cash on hand while it undergoes significant restructuring to digest the Paramount deal.

Skydance’s partner in the new PSKY is Redbird Capital, itself a private equity firm with contacts across the globe including China and the Gulf States. It’s unclear, however, if the Trump Administration would green light a deal to buy major US media companies with foreign cash. 

Complicating matters further for the Ellison’s is WBD’s CEO David Zaslav, who has been barreling ahead with a plan to separate WBD into two units – one with his growth businesses, streaming and studios, and another with his cable properties.

Zas has hired Goldman Sachs to sniff out other potential buyers, as he has heard that Larry Ellison might not be so keen to part with $60 billion so soon after his son closed the Paramount deal. 

He’s looking for a price just for the streaming and studio unit of over $30 a share – a significant premium to the $22-$24 a share that the Ellison’s leaked they wanted for all of WBD, while touting the recent string of WBD box office hits and his now profitable streaming service, HBO Max, currently the third largest streamer. 

This has roiled the C-suites at Skydance, from Ellison to Jeff Shell, the former NBCU chief who is now president of the company; and its new legal chief, Makan Delrahim, the former Trump DOJ antitrust chief recently hired to do deals – including possibly WBD.

“Listen, if Larry Ellison wanted to buy WBD, he could write the check tomorrow, this deal would be done a week after the leaks began last month,” the analyst said. “Yet here we are with radio silence, which should tell you this might not happen anytime soon because Larry isn’t on board – at least not yet.”