Entertainment
Could Paramount's flirtation with Bronfman strain the Skydance deal?
Just when the $8.4-billion deal for David Ellison’s Skydance Media to buy Paramount Global was gliding toward the finish line, Shari Redstone’s roller-coaster sale took another sharp turn.
Seagram liquor company heir Edgar Bronfman Jr. this week persuaded Paramount’s independent board members to consider his rival bid for the Redstone family’s investment firm, National Amusements Inc., and a minority stake in Paramount. After spending weeks rounding up investors, Bronfman submitted his proposal late Monday — two days before the bidding window closed — and then sweetened the offer to $6 billion.
Now the stage is set for more jockeying until Paramount’s Sept. 5 deadline to decide who will win the beleaguered media company that owns CBS, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, MTV and the historic Melrose Avenue film studio.
“This has been a very strange process,” Charles Elson, founding director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at University of Delaware, said Friday. “This company has provided more ‘theater’ than any other company I can think of. … It’s just remarkable that here we are.”
Paramount’s decision to extend the deadline for Bronfman did not sit well with the Skydance team.
Skydance’s lawyers sent a terse letter to Paramount’s special committee of independent directors Thursday, accusing them of violating the terms of Skydance’s agreement to buy National Amusements and Paramount, according to three people familiar with the letter who were not authorized to discuss it.
Bronfman’s bid isn’t expected to derail the Skydance deal, according to the knowledgeable people.
But there are risks to Paramount’s late-in-the-game flirtation with another suitor.
“It’s not cost-less to do this,” said Melissa A. Schilling, a management professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “It is creating conflict with Skydance and, should they prevail, they are going to come in angry. That’s not a great way to start a marriage.”
Edgar Bronfman Jr. in 2019.
(Michael Kovac / Getty Images)
Representatives of Redstone, Paramount, Bronfman and Skydance declined to comment.
Bronfman is trying to thread a needle created by a provision in the Skydance agreement, approved in July. The deal established a 45-day “go shop” window for Paramount’s board to solicit offers “superior” to that of Skydance.
Several sources speculated that Paramount’s board’s willingness to entertain Bronfman’s proposal stems from Redstone’s desire to protect her family from costly shareholder lawsuits. The sales process already has sparked litigation, and the Paramount directors’ efforts to beat the bushes could help demonstrate that there weren’t viable bidders beyond Skydance, helping them defend against shareholder actions.
“This process could be designed to put a check mark in the due diligence box for shareholders, saying: ‘We looked out for you,’ ” Schilling said.
There could be other motivations.
The Skydance group has deep pockets, including tech titan Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle Corp., and RedBird Capital Media, a decade-old firm founded by former Goldman Sachs partner Gerry Cardinale.
Paramount may also be angling for additional concessions from the Skydance group, the knowledgeable people said.
But Skydance already has sweetened its offer for Paramount and NAI — twice.
There could be continued heartburn over the terms of the Skydance deal. The major issue, according to shareholders, is the all-stock nature of the transaction and the plan to fold David Ellison’s smaller Santa Monica Skydance studio into Paramount.
Skydance Media founder and CEO David Ellison.
(Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Some shareholders have grumbled over the $4.75-billion valuation of Skydance, alleging the entertainment firm isn’t worth nearly that much.
Skydance co-owns some of the Paramount studio’s biggest blockbusters, including “Mission: Impossible,” “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Star Trek.” Ellison’s company also has been building an animation studio under John Lasseter, former Pixar creative executive.
Some investors complain that the deal undervalues the holdings of Paramount shareholders while overvaluing Skydance, further diluting the value of Paramount’s stock.
That’s a scenario that played out with the disastrous AOL-Time Warner merger a quarter of a century ago, Schilling said.
“One of the things the AOL-Time Warner deal taught us is that the company that is initiating the transaction may be overvalued,” Schilling said. “AOL’s stock was valued super high because that was at the peak of the internet bubble. And AOL was able to turn a bunch of unrealized capital gains into cold hard assets.”
Skydance won support of Paramount’s board, in large part, by carving out $4.5 billion to buy shares from Paramount investors, including nonvoting Class B shares at $15 a share.
Bronfman scrambled to identify funds — a proposed $1.7-billion set-aside — to offer Class B investors $16 a share.
Both bids would inject $1.5 billion into Paramount’s battered balance sheet, allowing the firm to pay down debt, when the deal closes. Federal regulators must weigh in, a process that’s expected to take about a year.
In addition, Bronfman said he would match Skydance’s proposal to buy out National Amusements for $2.4 billion. Once the firm’s debts of about $650 million are paid, the Redstone family would come away with $1.75 billion.
The late Sumner Redstone made sure the company, formerly known as Viacom, had two classes of stock, allowing his family to keep a tight grip. The Redstones, through National Amusements, own 77% of Paramount’s voting Class A shares.
But the bulk of the equity is held by nonvoting Class B shareholders — and that’s the problem, Elson said.
“The controlling shareholder can move on their own whim as opposed to doing what other shareholders would agree to,” Elson said.
Shari Redstone.
(Martina Albertazzi / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“Go shop” provisions are infrequent during competitive auctions but are fairly common for the sale of financial firms or privately held companies, Schilling said.
Skydance has the ability to match the terms of Bronfman’s deal.
Most observers believe Bronfman has an uphill battle to wrest the deal away from the Ellisons.
“We simply cannot fathom why Bronfman (and components of his investor group) would be pursuing Paramount this aggressively unless the Redstones and members of the Paramount Special Committee wanted him to,” media analyst Richard Greenfield of Lightshed Partners wrote in a report earlier this week.
“Maybe the Redstones have had second thoughts about selling to Skydance/Ellison?” Greenfield wrote.
Movie Reviews
‘Relationship Goals’ Review: Amazon’s Glamorized Book Commercial Almost Looks Like a Real Rom-Com
It didn’t used to be this way, but thanks to the magic of streaming you can now pause anything at any time and pick up on fun little details. I don’t recommend you watch Prime Video’s “Relationship Goals” — at all — but if you do, I recommend you pause it towards the end. There’s a scene where Kelly Rowland, playing a TV executive with a long list of demands for her romantic partners, looks at a multi-page printout of her green flags. It’s full of unreasonable requirements, like having a 401K (in this economy), but also very reasonable demands, like well-groomed nose hair. Not “no” nose hair. Apparently she likes nose hair. She just needs it well-groomed. Fair enough.
In a halfway decent universe, this could have been the only interesting thing about “Relationship Goals,” a conventional, boring, forgettable romantic comedy if ever I’ve seen one. But we don’t live in a halfway decent universe. We live in one where this conventional, boring, forgettable romantic comedy isn’t even a romantic comedy. It’s a shameless promotion for a book about relationship advice, released on a streaming service that also happens to sell the book. It even features lines like, “This story hit so hard I Amazoned a copy of ‘Relationship Goals’ right away.”
If you haven’t heard of it, “Relationship Goals” is a book by Pastor Michael Todd which, if this movie is any indication, is full of mind-blowing romantic self-help tips like, if you’re not dating people you like, try dating different people, or maybe just try being single for a while. And hey, that’s not bad advice, it’s just really obvious advice. Then again it also compares people who date a lot, without a specific relationship goal, to chicken nuggets, because nobody wants to eat chicken nuggets if everyone’s touched them first. I’d like to think the book is more thoughtful and less condescending than that, but I remind you that this is a feature-length commercial for that book, and this is how they’re selling it. So maybe not?
“Relationship Goals” stars Kelly Rowland as Leah, a TV producer on a hit morning news show. She expects a big promotion after her boss retires but, surprise-surprise, the network wants her to compete with a new hire, Jarrett (Cliff “Method Man” Smith), who just happens to be the ex-boyfriend who cheated on her years ago. They’re assigned to work on a Valentine’s Day segment together — yes, together, as if that could possibly prove one is more qualified than the other — and it’s about the book “Relationship Goals,” which Jarrett says changed his life. Unlike Jarrett, Leah doesn’t want to make a puff piece commercial, which is the funniest thing about this “comedy” because that’s obviously all this is. All of it.
“Relationship Goals” runs through all the romantic comedy rhythms without ever settling on a beat. Rowland and Smith are likable performers but their banter is strained, and the film can’t settle on a structure that forces them to interact. Early in the movie they get trapped in Oklahoma, so they have to drive six hours to another airport to get back to the studio. You’d think that would be a decent framework for a rom-com. It’s familiar, but tried-and-true. Instead, we just get one brief interaction in a car, one forced gag about diner food and then they’re back home. The film set up a bit and then abandoned anything resembling a bit. Again, this is supposed to be a romantic comedy. We’re literally here for the bits. More bits, please. Why did you abandon the bits?
There’s a supporting cast in “Relationship Goals,” including a best friend who’s single and desperate (Annie Gonzalez) and another best friend who’s in a long-term relationship with no marriage prospects (Robin Thede). They exist to have problems that are easily solved by the book “Relationship Goals,” because the protagonists can’t get together until the end, and by itself that wouldn’t make it look like “Relationship Goals” has quick-fix solutions to all your romantic needs. And this movie really wants you to think it’s the perfect quick-fix.
But those characters also exist because “Relationship Goals” is following the template set forth by “Think Like a Man,” another rom-com based on and explicitly about a real-life romantic advice book. “Think Like a Man” was also a shameless commercial but it did, at least, try to be a very good commercial. “Think Like a Man” had a variety of romantic subplots that it sold with a great cast, solid dialogue and some cinematic oomph. “Relationship Goals” isn’t trying to convince us it’s a real film, it’s only doing the book commercial part. Which means it’s not even a good book commercial.
If you look back at Leah’s list of romantic requirements you’ll notice that one of them is “Enjoys film.” She tears these pages up, by the way, presumably because by that point Leah — and the movie itself — has long since given up on the concept of cinema. “Relationship Goals” isn’t as insulting as Prime Video’s “War of the Worlds,” in which the planet was literally saved by two Amazon purchases and the wonder of flying Amazon drones, but then very few films are, so that’s not a useful comparison. It’s enough that this film is insulting, unconvincing, unfunny, unromantic, and, worst of all, at least to the Amazon executives, it doesn’t even make you want to buy the damn book.
Entertainment
Savannah Guthrie will no longer be part of NBC’s Winter Olympics coverage
“Today” co-anchor Savannah Guthrie will not head to Milan for NBC’s 2026 Winter Olympics coverage as she deals with the ongoing police investigation into the suspected abduction of her mother.
“Savannah will not be joining us at the Olympics as she focuses on being with her family during this difficult time,” an NBC Sports representative said Tuesday in a statement. “Our hearts are with her and the entire Guthrie family as the search continues for their mother.”
Guthrie was scheduled to co-host NBC’s telecast of the Friday opening ceremonies for the Milan Cortina Games alongside Terry Gannon of NBC Sports. The network representative said alternative plans will be announced shortly.
Savannah Guthrie and her mother, Nancy Guthrie, in 2023.
(Nathan Congleton / NBC / Getty Images)
Law enforcement officials believe Nancy Guthrie, 84, was last seen at her home outside of Tucson, Ariz. on Saturday night. Police were called after relatives were told she missed the Sunday church service she regularly attends and did not find her at home.
Police found Nancy Guthrie’s phone, wallet, car and medication left behind, indicating she did not leave voluntarily. She has no cognitive issues, but has limited physical mobility and could not walk far on her own, family members have told police.
On Tuesday, Lima County Sheriff Chris Nanos said at a news briefing that authorities believe Nancy Guthrie was taken against her will. He also said the department is aware of “reports circulating about possible ransom note(s)” in the case. TMZ reported on the existence of an alleged ransom note Tuesday, but Nanos did not verify the account,
According to law enforcement sources not authorized to speak about the case publicly, there was blood at the scene and someone appeared to have forced their way inside.
Guthrie, a “Today” co-host since 2012, has been off the program since Monday. She was scheduled to head to Milan early this week.
Guthrie’s mother, who lived on her own, has been an occasional on-air guest at “Today.” Her appearances made her a favorite of Guthrie’s co-workers and staff at the program.
Movie Reviews
Still Hope
When Hope gets abducted and forced into human trafficking, her life turns into a living nightmare. Still Hope details her journey through that appalling experience and her subsequent rescue, emphasizing the long and difficult recovery that follows. Based on true stories from trafficking survivors, the film covers difficult subject matter. We see violence and some drug use. And though it doesn’t shy away from the horrors of sex trafficking, the film doesn’t delve into visually explicit territory. And ultimately, it ends on a hopeful note.
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