Tech, TV, Movies and News: Ellisons on Brink of Colossal Empire

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/business/media/tech-tv-movies-and-news-ellisons-on-brink-of-colossal-empire.html

Tech, TV, Movies and News: Ellisons on Brink of Colossal Empire
If Paramount can close its deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, Larry and David Ellison will influence nearly every corner of news, entertainment and tech.
By John Koblin and Brooks Barnes
Feb. 27, 2026, 5:04 a.m. ET

As little as a year ago, Larry Ellison, at 80 years old, appeared to be winding down his long career as a tech mogul. And his son David Ellison owned a lone Hollywood company, and a rather minuscule one at that: Skydance Media.

But now the two are on the brink of overseeing an empire that touches nearly every corner of news, entertainment and tech.

If the Ellisons close their deal to fold Warner Bros. Discovery into what is now Paramount Skydance, as they are poised to do after Netflix abandoned its bid on Thursday night, the family will control companies as powerful and varied as CBS, Oracle, CNN, Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures and HBO.

Add in Oracle’s recent 15 percent stake in the venture that controls the American arm of TikTok, and their holdings would rival those of the Murdoch family at the height of its powers. In the 2000s and 2010s, the patriarch, Rupert, oversaw a major Hollywood studio, the Fox broadcast network, Fox News, the FX cable network, The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal and the Sky satellite television service in Europe.

Even without TikTok and Oracle, the Ellisons will have assembled a collection of Hollywood properties that, while smaller, puts them in the orbit of superpowers like Disney.

...