David Ellison's moves at Paramount have set off a game of musical chairs around town with execs including Peter Rice and Casey Bloys. Sometimes a dinner is just a dinner. But when it plays out against the backdrop of a $111 billion studio merger, the town perks up.
Former Walt Disney Television chairman Peter Rice was spotted dining with Ynon Kreiz, the new co-CEO of the merged Paramount and Warner Bros., last month at Marea in Beverly Hills, Page Six Hollywood has exclusively learned.
Our high-level source didn’t think much of the sighting at the time. After all, Kreiz was still ensconced in his CEO role at Mattel. But on Wednesday, Paramount Skydance announced that Kreiz will be the new co-head of the merged studios under CEO David Ellison.
“They had a three-hour dinner,” says the source of Rice and Kreiz. The insider further described the conversation as “private,” “intense” and “not casual.”
As Page Six Hollywood told you yesterday, Rice — who was also the president of 21st Century Fox and CEO of Fox Networks Group — is very much considered a replacement for every possible C-suite vacancy resulting from the Paramount-Warners mega-merger that’s expected to have a domino effect throughout the town.
High-level sources believe Rice is now being courted to join Ellison’s combined studios (now called Skydance, the CEO revealed Friday morning) at the same time that Warner Bros. film toppers Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy are now reportedly out.
That leaves Paramount Pictures co-chairs Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg still in the fold. The question is whether Rice is being courted for a potential role above or parallel to Greenstein and Goldberg.
Puck reported that Greenstein and Goldberg are being promoted to oversee the combined studio’s slate of 30 films per year for the first two years post-merger — rising to 32 films a year for the following three years as part of Paramount’s recently reached legal settlement to clear the way for the merger.
(Paramount declined to comment about Rice, or the new company’s management structure, and Rice did not get back to us.)
“If I were them, I would bring him in and give him anything he wanted,” says one agent with a roster of A-list clients of Rice.
One veteran exec says Greenstein and Goldberg should be looking over their shoulders given how easily Ellison gave loyalist Cindy Holland — Paramount’s recently deposed chair of direct-to-consumer — the shiv earlier this week in favor of HBO chief Casey Bloys.
We hear that Ellison was disappointed that Holland didn’t bid on “Lonesome Dove,” a project that now is in the works at Netflix. Ellison is said to be a huge fan of the property that is based on author Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novels. Ironically, CBS previously made the acclaimed 1989 miniseries as an epic Western starring Robert Duvall.
Holland’s ouster has rubbed some around town as unnecessarily heartless. “If I was Ellison, I would have gone to Cindy and said, ‘Here’s my decision [to elevate Bloys]. What can I do to make you happy?’” says a veteran executive. “I just don’t understand it. It’s setting out to be a boys’ club over there between all the bros at RedBird and the executive ranks at Warner Bros. and Paramount.”
Meanwhile, Rice has options and is untethered by any contract.
In 2023, he struck a nonexclusive deal with A24, where he produced Chris Rock’s “Misty Green,” a Hollywood-set film that played huge at the Toronto International Film Festival last month. He’s also producing the LA28 Olympics and Paralympic ceremonies.
Either way, being spotted at dinner with the new co-CEO of Paramount-Warner Bros. can only elevate Rice’s standing in town.
Back in March, we told you exclusively about a lunch between Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos and Bloys, sparking a whole lot of press coverage and speculation. And being publicly courted by Netflix certainly didn’t hurt Bloys’ chances of taking the throne of the Paramount-Warner Bros.’ TV operations.
Speaking of Bloys, the HBO CEO made his first public comments since news broke on Tuesday that he’ll oversee content for Paramount+ and HBO Max and not leave the newly formed company — as had been widely speculated.
Bloys addressed the elephant in the room early in his discussion with Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw. “Most people in my position, given what’s going on, probably would have cancelled on you,” Bloys told Shaw at Bloomberg’s “Screentime” conference on Thursday. “But I didn’t want to leave you high and dry.”
For the remainder of the interview, Bloys diplomatically danced around the topic saying he wasn’t going to get into his “job requirements” when his contract is up nor did he want to get in the way of Ellison’s announcements on the “leadership structure” of the newly formed company.
But when asked if the departure of Holland created a “ready made vacuum” for him to step into, Bloys finally yielded. “Obviously… yes.”
— with additional reporting by Peter Kiefer
