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Home > Celestial Blood > New Paramount brass announces a seven year, $7.7 billion UFC grab
Podcast: Celestial Blood
Episode:

New Paramount brass announces a seven year, $7.7 billion UFC grab
Category: Arts
Duration: 00:00:00
Publish Date: 2025-08-15 21:30:00
Description: With David Ellison now steering the Paramount ship, the company’s newly announced leadership team is wasting no time making waves by rolling out a film slate that includes a James Mangold/Timothée Chalamet crime drama. Plus, for an even bigger flex they’re inking a $7.7 billion, seven year deal to secure UFC rights . Can the studio back up these bold moves? Kim Masters and Matt Belloni dig into how things are shaking out for the new Paramount. Fight night? In a $7.7 billion, seven year deal wrested from Disney and Netflix, Paramount brokered a UFC rights deal that’s a clear win for the league. It’s also a loud, if risky, statement for Ellison. “This is negotiated by Ari Emanuel, who plays a dual role here of repping David Ellison’s Skydance and being owner of UFC parent company, TKO,” says Masters. “That was a big noise. And it's certainly good for UFC, not so sure for Paramount, but it makes a statement.” Coming soon to a theater near you? After years of churning out originals for streamers like Apple and Netflix, Skydance insists every future Paramount film will head to theaters. “The theatrical movie business is much different than the streaming movie business, so those movies need to feel theatrical in order to be successful in theaters,” Belloni explains. “We haven't heard yet how they plan to make those movies feel theatrical, whether they're going to be IP driven, whether they believe that they can get people to show up for star-driven [films], or genre, or R rated comedies.” Window shopping? Paramount’s new regime faces a release-window tug-of-war between studio president Jeff Shell’s variable theatrical releases and distribution head Chris Aronson’s insistence on consistency. “I think the Jeff Shell playbook is the one that's going to likely win out here,” Belloni speculates. “He's the president of the company, and he has a very distinct perspective on this. I think we will see varying windows where some of them that are smaller movies do have that 17 day window, and then some of the big franchise stuff will get longer [windows]... And they will make a game time decision as to what movie gets what window.”
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