Paramount CEO David Ellison was emphatic about theatrical during a call with Wall Street on Monday. “It’s something we deeply, deeply believe in,” he said. “Large franchises and big pieces of intellectual property are launched in theaters, period.”
Talking through Paramount’s massive merger with Warner Bros Discovery announced Friday, he wound back to 2022 when one film in particular had a huge impact on his thinking regarding theatrical versus streaming.
“I’ll say I personally learned this lesson in 2022,” he said. “That year, we had Top Gun: Maverick, which, you know, became a cultural phenomenon, grossing $1.5 billion at the box office, and really is something that resonated culturally.” Ellison was a producer on Tom Cruise sequel, which jumpstarted the post-Covid theatrical marketplace.
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Also that year, “at the same time, we released The Adam Project, on Netflix, which, at the time of its release, was the most successful film on Netflix in the time.” He incredibly proud of both films, he said, “But (Top Gun) really did have a different cultural resonance.”
“It’s why we said from day one, when we acquired Paramount, that we weren’t going to be in the business of making movies directly for streaming. We really believe that movies should be seen in theaters, and we still believe that’s one of the most significant places that you can really create long term intellectual property. Television is a completely different business.”
Preserving the health of movies in theaters and the theatrical window has been a big concern as Netflix, which had downplayed cinemas for years, emerged victorious in the battle for WBD. Uproar from stakeholders pushed the giant streamer’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos to pinky swear up and down that he was all in on theatrical.
The new version would combined two Hollywood studios, which also agitates industry players tremendously, especially give the decline in studio output after the 2019 merger of Disney and Fox. Ellison is trying to assuage those fears.
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