What Does The New Paramount Pictures Look Like?

On May 8, 1912, Adolph Zukor founded The Famous Players Film Company. This eccentric figure had no idea, but he’d just established an entity that would eventually merge with other studios to become Paramount Pictures. 113 years later, Paramount Pictures was sold to David Ellison and Skydance, bringing an end to the Redstone family’s 31-year control of the studio and its subsidiaries.

Over its lengthy existence, Paramount has housed some of the most acclaimed and successful films in history, including Titanic, The Godfather, Chinatown, Forrest Gump, Monster Trucks, and countless others. It’s also been plagued by endless problems in the 21st century. Save for an insane stretch from 2007 to 2011 where DreamWorks SKG and Marvel Studios projects were bolstering Paramount’s slate (or 2022, the year of Top Gun: Maverick), Paramount has routinely been in last place at the annual domestic box office among major studios.

On August 13, 2025, Ellison and the rest of Paramount’s new leadership held a public meeting to discuss the studio’s new direction. What do those ambitions look like? And are these new plans really all that different from the unrealized schemes of previous moguls who vowed to overhaul Paramount back into a cinematic powerhouse?

Paramount’s Ramping Up Its Annual Slate
One of Ellison’s most memorable vows at this meeting was to significantly increase the amount of films Paramount releases theatrically annually. Skydance-owned Paramount will start dropping 15 films a year on the big screen before ramping up to 20 annual titles. That’s one of the most immediately evocative promises one can make about Paramount since a scant slate has been a problem for the studio for the entire 21st century. Per Nicole LaPorte’s 2011 text The Men Who Would Be King, these struggles were a key reason Paramount bought DreamWorks SKG in the mid-2000s.

In 2014 and 2015, Paramount only released 11 new theatrical movies each year. Even when Brad Grey’s Paramount tenure ended, the drought of new features didn’t end. Last year, Paramount only released 10 theatrical films (two of which, September 5 and Better Man, didn’t go into wide release until 2025) while the first eight months of 2025 have seen the studio release five films. For comparison’s sake, Warner Bros has distributed (including New Line Cinema and DC Studios titles) nine new films domestically and Universal Pictures has released ten (including this weekend’s Nobody 2) within 2025’s first eight months.

Clearly, this is a long-standing problem that Ellison’s Paramount could potentially clear up. Meanwhile, the studio head claimed an interest in putting out more R-rated comedies, an exciting proposition given the dearth of such films theatrically. If Paramount plays its cards right, this could be a good theatrical landscape void for the studio to fill. Similarly shrewd was announcing an intention to make more live-action family-skewing tentpoles. Given how the biggest long-running sagas like the Marvel Cinematic Universe are now drawing in more and more older viewers, there could be an audience for projects akin to Night at the Museum or the Jumanji films.

The Paramount Franchise Problem
Less successful in Ellison’s presentation of Paramount’s future was emphasizing how Skydance will steer the studio towards more franchise films. Given how some of this year’s biggest hits are non-franchise titles like Sinners and Weapons, one would think Hollywood might start rethinking its strategy of putting tentpoles at the forefront of everything. Instead, Ellison emphasized that further Star Trek, Transformers, Top Gun, and, most inexplicably, World War Z adventures are on the way. To paraphrase a cursed Christian song, “David Fincher’s World War Z 2 is not dead, it might be surely alive!”

In all seriousness, Skydance will face the same problems with reviving Paramount’s biggest brands that Disney had with exploiting various 20th Century Fox intellectual properties. In both cases, the biggest brands have already been drained dry before the new owners got there. Just as Independence Day, Die Hard, and Ice Age were already milked for all they were worth during the 2010s, so too has Paramount’s biggest IP already been exploited.

After all, we’re a decade removed from the Transformers Cinematic Universe writer’s room being founded. In 2016, Brad Grey’s final year of running Paramount Pictures (before Jim Gianopulos stepped in to overhaul the studio), a separate Hasbro Cinematic Universe was announced that would’ve combined G.I. Joe with properties like M.A.S.K. and Micronauts. Most tellingly, in one of his first interviews after becoming Paramount’s head in early 2017, Gianopulos announced that Star Trek and Transformers were the studio’s two biggest priorities going forward. Ellison name-checked those same sagas on August 13.

Speaking of Star Trek, good luck getting that saga off the ground in theaters. Countless directors (Quentin Tarantino, S.J. Clarkson, Matt Shakman, etc.) were attached to direct various proposed Star Trek movies in the last eight years. None of them went forward. Between these immense Starfleet-related difficulties, the last two Transformers entries coming up short financially, and the declining overseas demand for American blockbusters, Paramount would be wiser to focus on lower-budgeted original films rather than repeating the same franchise obsessions of previous Paramount regimes.

Remember: Snake Eyes made way less than The Lost City. Smile outgrossed Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. A Quiet Place left the last three Transformers movies in the dust domestically. To quote a beloved Paramount-owned property: “how many times do we have to teach you this lesson, old man?!?”

Trying to Please Talent…For Now
After David Zaslav’s endless string of screw-ups in 2022 and 2023, newly minted Warner Bros. Pictures heads Michael de Luca and Pam Abdy worked overtime to make their new digs a place artists would want to work at. It took years of toiling, but their efforts seem to be paying off, with the acclaim and box office success greeting films like Weapons, Sinners, and Superman (somewhat) drowning out Zaslav’s toxic reputation. Ellison and his Skydance cohorts seem to be playing a similar game of cozying up to big Hollywood talent in their initial days of running Paramount.

During that fateful August 13 meeting, Ellison emphasized this studio would house original theatrical films, like the new Paramount’s first film pitch acquisition, the Timothee Chalamet crime film High Side. The head of Paramount streaming, Cindy Holland, meanwhile, declared “streaming movies are not a priority for me” before Ellison waxed poetic on the virtues of theatrical-exclusive titles.

Such remarks will be music to the ears of many filmmakers. It’s also a sharp contrast to the infamous reputations Paramount regimes had with artists. Producer Jason Blum, for instance, has often recalled how he was “thrown off the lot” by Paramount Pictures brass after his film Paranormal Activity was shaping up to be a hit. Paramount’s decision to exclude Blum from getting any credit for the title led to him starting up a lucrative Blumhouse deal with Universal.

The Men Who Would Be King, meanwhile, alleged that Paramount brass constantly aggravated DreamWorks SKG leadership. Former Paramount COO Andrew Gumpert also bemoaned in 2018 how Jordan Peele (who ran and starred in Key & Peele for Paramount’s sibling channel Comedy Central) left Paramount to go direct Get Out for Universal/Blumhouse.

These and other issues with maintaining talent relations were often strained by how often Paramount shifted hands and/or overhauled production plans. The studio divorced and then reunited with CBS in the span of 14 years, while there was a messy eradication of DreamWorks SKG just a few years after Paramount bought the studio. With David Ellison emphasizing a “20 year plan” for Paramount and saying all the things modern directors love hearing, this mogul is suggesting the new Paramount Pictures will be a stable realm hospitable to artists.

That, along with the significant ramping up of film production, could finally turn the house Adolph Zukor built into a Hollywood titan once more. Then again, leaning so heavily on tired and struggling brands like Star Trek and Transformers could signify that Skydance will just repeat the same mistakes of past Paramount owners who vowed they could turn this ship around. One easy way to instantly turn this studio into the biggest label in Tinseltown? Center all future movies around Creech from Monster Trucks. The people crave her squishy tentacles.

P.S. Ellison’s Paramount is gearing up for apparently “massive” lay-offs. David Ellison’s daddy is Larry Ellison, a man worth over $290 billion. Surely that guy has enough “pocket change” to ensure these working-class souls at Paramount don’t have to lose their jobs.