Will the Skydance merger work?

It is a coin flip: I give the Skydance merger a 50% chance of working. Paramount bought Warner Bros. Discovery for $110 billion, the deal closed on 6 October 2026, and the new parent is called Skydance. It works only if it hits its $6 billion savings target under $79 billion of net debt. The numbers are enormous. Paramount projects roughly $69 billion in combined 2026 revenue and $18 billion in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), but that EBITDA already assumes the full $6 billion-plus savings target. Management says it can deliver more than $6 billion in annual savings within 3 years. Under its legal settlement, the combined company must also release at least 30 films a year for the first 2 years and 32 a year for the following 3. Then comes the bill. Roughly $79 billion of net debt. Junk credit ratings from S&P and Fitch. Expensive borrowing. Old cable and broadcast TV in decline. And a $6 billion savings target that Warner Bros. Discovery itself previously called aggressive and highly speculative. And the big money keeps coming in. Elon Musk put about $1 billion into Skydance in October 2026, Semafor reported. That makes him a shareholder in the parent company of CNN, CBS and HBO. The friendship runs both ways: Larry Ellison, Oracle co-founder and father of Skydance chairman David Ellison, put $1 billion into Musk's Twitter takeover in 2022. Neither Musk nor Skydance has confirmed the deal publicly. My forecast: layoffs, 100% probability. Full $6 billion savings target achieved, 50% probability. Those percentages are my forecast, not company guidance or Wall Street data. The debt decides, not the content.