Skydance, which closed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery a month ago, plans to offer an HBO Max-Paramount+ by early next year, according to Skydance CEO David Eillison.
The announcement came amid the release of the combined company’s third quarter financials, which saw revenue at Paramount’s direct-to-consumer services grow to $2.5 billion for the quarter, 11% over the year-earlier period, which was also impacted by the close of the Skydance-Paramount merger in August 2025. Average revenue per user rose 14% and subscriptions increased 6%.
Currently both services have a combined subscription base of 203 million subscribers, which would put it in the same league as Amazon Prime, currently the second largest streaming service worldwide with about 200-210 million. Netflix leads the pack with more than 300M.
With content that spans news, sports and a wide range of popular film and TV franchises, Skydance CEO David Ellison told analysts in a conference call that he thinks consumers “will be delighted” with the proposed bundle, which he called “our first step towards combining the two services.”
“By bringing these services together, we are well positioned to deliver for a broad range of audience cohorts,” Ellison said. “And given this, we really do expect to grow region engagement, improve retention, and increase revenue and profitability, and line with, or ahead of the leading competitors over the long term.”
Pricing has not been publicly discussed, but Ellison said they would base it on “discipline and consumer feedback, so we can continue to grow the services” during the bundle phase.”
Ellison also updated shareholders on the company’s plans to deal with a decline in linear TV, telling them that by 2030, they expect to move “a meaningful majority of revenue and profit from TV to our streaming and studios businesses.”
As to when or if Skydance will merge HBO Max and Paramount+ into one service, Ellison was coy, telling reporters during its call with Wall St. analyst, that, “long-term, the plan is basically to bring them together,” but that “it’ll take a period of time to do that.
“I think in the immediate [term], you will see them operated separately, with things like bundling or things that you’ll be able to see accelerated in the relatively short term, he said. “I can’t be specific about that yet today.”
