Paramount Skydance executives avoided any discussion of the company’s latest acquisition plan to buy Warner Bros. Discovery as they released a fourth-quarter 2025 earnings report Wednesday that reflected a decline in the company’s core linear TV business.
CEO David Ellison and Paramount President Jeff Shell answered questions from Wall Street analysts about the company’s fourth-quarter results, the studio’s first full quarter under Ellison’s ownership.
Ellison flatly stated that Paramount’s 2025 film project “underperformed.” Ellison and Schell were asked about the possibility of the NFL renegotiating its television rights contract starting in 2029. And Ellison told analysts he was bullish on streaming’s ad-supported FAST channel division and that Paramount would eventually invest “10x” in engineering talent as part of the studio’s revitalization plan.
Read more: Paramount Skydance widens fourth-quarter loss due to TV recession
Dennis Cinelli, Paramount’s newly appointed chief financial officer, said the overall outlook for Paramount Pictures’ film business in 2026 is down compared to 2025, despite more theatrical releases. Paramount said it plans to release 16 films in theaters this year, up from eight in 2025.
“We expect actual revenue to decline. Overall, it’s very clear that we are in a real turnaround phase of that business. As we execute that turnaround, some of that will materialize in 2026, but most of it will materialize in future years. So even if actual revenue declines, we expect improved cost management and gains from licensing agreements to drive the studio’s profitability,” Cinelli said.
Ellison’s Skydance Media acquired Paramount Global last August. “We inherited an underperforming slate, and we expect the profitability of our movie slate to improve significantly this year,” Ellison said.
Asked for an example of how the new structure is implementing its plan to use technological upgrades to drive operational improvements at the more than 100-year-old studio, Ellison pointed to changes that have already been made, but suggested there is more to come.
“If you look at the engineers we have now, we’re basically looking at about 10 times the size of the people we’re investing in this space,” Ellison said. “We really want to be in a position to be an industry leader in how we shape this transformation.”
Ellison and Shell were furious about the Paramount+ streamer’s growth and profit projections. Ellison also emphasized his support for the company’s Pluto TV platform, which offers dozens of free ad-supported streaming TV channels (also known as FAST) around the world.
“I’m a strong believer in the field of FAST. If you really look at the world, FAST is only going to become more and more important. And we see very encouraging signs from Pluto that our involvement is increasing,” Ellison said. “The headwind we’re facing is really monetization, and we’re doing some things to fix that. And while Pluto has always been a leader in the FAST space and is a profitable platform, from our perspective it was underinvested by previous owners and managers, both from a content standpoint and from a product standpoint.”
As for the NFL, Shell expressed confidence that Paramount’s CBS will remain a cornerstone of the league’s game distribution strategy for years to come. The NFL has the right to renegotiate the contract, which was signed in 2021 and extended through 2033. Shell pointed to the power of regionalization, which allows CBS to carry Sunday NFL coverage in its AFC package, similar to what Fox does with its Sunday NFC package. If the NFL restarts the contract, the amount is expected to be astronomical.
“We are very confident that we will continue to do business with the NFL over the long term, and we have given due consideration to the impact of those negotiations in our internal projections going forward,” Shell said. “One of the unique things about our relationship with the NFL, and I would say it’s probably somewhere in the relationship between Fox and the NFL, is the linchpin of their flywheel, the linchpin of their reach is the reach of both CBS and Fox on Sunday afternoons. “It’s important that these games are regionalized and that it benefits both us and Fox by aggregating that viewership and maximizing viewership in each market for the best games, which benefits the NFL and really maximizes viewership on any given Sunday.”
