Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Paramount Global has a gaming problem — and Skydance Media could be the solution. Earlier this month Paramount and its controlling shareholder Shari Redstone agreed to sell the company to David Ellison’s Skydance, which has not one but two internal game studios.
The still-pending deal could serve as a catalyst boosting Paramount’s presence in gaming. Ellison, son of Silicon Valley billionaire Larry Ellison, is said to be a gamer himself who sees video games as being on a par with TV and film.
Paramount Games recently licensed rights to make an “Avatar: The Last Airbender” game here and teamed with an outside developer for a “Paranormal Activity” game there.
But the division has been an afterthought since well before the second merger between Viacom and CBS to create Paramount Global and at this point largely exists in name alone. “One of the big problems in this business… is growth, and Skydance takes a bunch of parts of the business that Paramount needs to get into, including games, and adds a growth engine to the company,” Jeff Shell, set to become president of the merged Paramount-Skydance, said alongside Ellison on the July 8 call announcing the proposed sale to analysts and investors.
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