Viacom and CBS are merging, and that’s set to affect Paramount Pictures.
Paramount has come through a few taxing years of late to find a path forward, and a fair few box office hits. In particular, A Quiet Place and Mission: Impossible – Fallout have been successes for the studio, and new chapters are on the way in both of those franchises.
The studio finds itself competing in a marketplace where Disney has swallowed up Fox, and Lionsgate has snapped up the likes of Starz. And now Paramount finds itself at the heart of a major new merger.
The coming together of the studio’s parent company Viacom with media giant CBS is reportedly edging closer. It’s a deal that puts a $13bn price tag on Viacom’s head, and the feeling is that the merged company will have the clout and size needed to compete in the current media market.
UPDATE: It was reported overnight that the deal is done. The all-stock deal has valued Viacom at just shy of $12bn in the end.
Unlike the Disney/Fox deal, this is unlikely to lead to the gutting of one company’s slate either, although the dreaded phrase ‘cost savings’ has popped up in this Bloomberg report on the deal. That’s corporate-speak for ‘job losses’ in our experience, although we can but hope that’s not the case.
The deal is still being negotiated, but is set to be sorted one way or the other shortly. Expect an announcement imminently.
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