ELENA The Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger has moved through every venue available to it — regulatory filings, opposition letters, a CinemaCon pitch to theater owners. Yesterday it moved to the dinner table. David Ellison hosted Donald Trump at the building now called the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace in Washington, while Representative Jamie Raskin held a rally on the National Mall across the street. We're going to break down what that dinner is as a business strategy — and we've been tracking this merger since Episode twenty-seven, so we have the thread. Also today: Bob Iger's first declared move since leaving Disney tells us exactly where he thinks media power is migrating, and it's toward venture capital, not the studio lot. And Europe's largest commercial broadcaster just completed an acquisition that echoes a playbook the U.S. ran a decade ago with complicated results.
MARCUS The thread I keep pulling on: all three of today's stories are about proximity to power. Ellison bought a dinner. Iger rejoined a tech fund run by someone in this administration's orbit. RTL bought a pay-TV subscriber base. Proximity is expensive. The returns are uncertain. That's what we're here to figure out.
ELENA Walk the clock back to Thursday night in Washington. Donald Trump arrives at what is now called the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace — formerly the United States Institute of Peace, renamed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio — for a private dinner hosted by Paramount CEO David Ellison. The invitation, which landed on social media earlier in the week, described it as an "intimate gathering in celebration of the First Amendment honoring the Trump White House and CBS White House correspondents." Across the street on the National Mall, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland and roughly two dozen protesters held a rally against the merger. Raskin called the event an "oligarch's dinner." An inflatable Trump on the Mall held a sign reading "Ellison's my boy."
MARCUS The venue choice does a lot of work on its own. A building renamed after the sitting president, hosting the sitting president, at a dinner thrown by a man whose hundred-and-ten-billion-dollar merger requires that president's regulatory approval. Raskin called it corruption. I'll call it unusually legible.
ELENA And Norm Eisen — former White House ethics official, now at Democracy Defenders Action — read the invitation aloud at the rally and said: "This resembles the First Amendment in the same way that a book burning is a celebration of the written word." That's a line that travels. It was all over social media within hours.
MARCUS It does. But here's the strategic read. This is what political access looks like when the stakes are existential. Ellison has been running a multi-front campaign for this merger for months. He lobbied lawmakers. He stood at CinemaCon two weeks ago and committed forty-five-day theatrical windows to theater owners. He's filed every regulatory document. The dinner is just the most visible front. You build access, you use access. That's how Washington works.
ELENA And on the same day as the dinner — same day — WBD shareholders voted to approve the sale to Paramount. The merger passed that vote. Zaslav's golden parachute, though: eighty-two percent of shareholders rejected it.
MARCUS Seventeen percent approved the Zaslav payout. Non-binding, technically — he still gets paid — but that number is a public verdict on how shareholders view the terms. And it happened the same night Ellison was having dinner with Trump. The merger is winning on paperwork and losing on optics at the same time.
RINA Can I jump in? Because there's a piece of this that the pure regulatory read misses. The invitation specifically said "honoring CBS White House correspondents." That's Paramount's news division. And the dinner was drawn from the corporate side — the news division wasn't involved in planning it. So you've got a CEO nominally honoring the journalism arm of his company, at a dinner held in a building named after the man whose administration has to approve his merger. That's a complicated place to put your news brand.
MARCUS The CBS News angle is real. It creates an internal credibility problem on top of the external optics problem. Those two things compound.
ELENA Here's where I land. Ellison is doing what any dealmaker in his position would do. The fact that the access is this visible — that's what's different. Usually these dinners are quieter. This one landed on social media before it happened, Raskin organized a rally, and Eisen's quote is now attached to every story about this merger for the foreseeable future. That's the cost Ellison paid for the access. Whether the access was worth that cost is the open question.
RINA And my downstream question is: if this merger closes — the shareholder vote and the DOJ silence since February both point that direction — what does that tell every other media company about how you navigate regulation in this environment? Because the playbook is being written in real time, and everyone is watching.
MARCUS The playbook has always been: build access to whoever holds the approval. What's new is the naked visibility of it. Every future media dealmaker is taking notes on the Institute of Peace, the First Amendment framing, the inflatable Trump on the Mall.
ELENA We've been on this merger since Episode twenty-seven — debt refinancing, opposition letters, the CinemaCon pitch, now a White House dinner. It keeps escalating. Whatever happens at the DOJ, this is the most politically entangled media deal of the last twenty years. And it's not finished yet.
ELENA Bob Iger's first declared move since handing the Disney CEO baton to Josh D'Amaro: he's rejoining Thrive Capital as an advisor. Not a studio job. Not a production company. A venture capital firm with a focus on internet and software companies. Thrive's founder, Josh Kushner, confirmed the move and said — and I want to get this exact — "Bob leads with boldness and conviction because he knows what he is building and why. He is rejoining Thrive at a time when that kind of leadership matters most." The question I keep circling: what is he building?
MARCUS "He knows what he is building and why" is an interesting phrase for a seventy-five-year-old who spent the last five years being publicly ambivalent about retirement. Iger came back to Disney in twenty twenty-two because Chapek imploded — he didn't plan that second act. So Kushner saying he knows exactly what he's doing now — I'm listening hard for what that actually means.
ELENA Here's my read. Iger made tech the core of his Disney tenure. Epic Games. BAMtech — that became the infrastructure for Disney Plus. The Apple deal in the early iPod era was historically significant. His tech credential is real, separate from his media credential. Thrive raised ten billion dollars for its latest fund. He's bringing institutional relationships and deal flow to a firm that already has the capital.
MARCUS As an advisor. He's still on the Disney board until year-end. So I want to ask the more direct version: is this where Bob Iger's post-Disney legacy actually gets written? Or is Thrive a prestigious landing spot while he figures out what he really wants to do? Because there's a version of this where he's sixty days into a new chapter and there's also a version where he's parking.
RINA I want to bring in the talent side, because I think that's getting underweighted. Iger is where the creative relationships lived at Disney for two decades. The trust that made the Pixar acquisition work, the Marvel integration, the Lucasfilm deal — that was personal. Some of that travels with him. A VC firm with Iger in an advisory role gets calls returned differently. That has real value in deal sourcing, even if he's not running portfolio companies.
ELENA And there's one more thread worth noting. Josh Kushner is Jared Kushner's younger brother. We just spent a segment on Ellison's dinner with Trump. Two of today's top stories connect media executives to the political ecosystem through different pathways — one through a White House dinner, one through a venture firm with family ties to that administration. That's just the water the industry is swimming in right now. Worth one observation, and then we stay on the business.
MARCUS Right. And the business angle on the Kushner connection is actually about capital access rather than political access — Thrive has raised ten billion dollars and has a track record in Spotify, Instagram, Robinhood. Iger is buying into that network, not the other one.
RINA Back to the creator side for a second — what does this mean for the people who built their Disney careers in relationship to Iger? Does D'Amaro inherit those filmmaker relationships cleanly? Or does some of that trust migrate with the outgoing CEO?
ELENA D'Amaro had a long runway precisely because Iger managed the transition carefully. The town hall, the public handoff — all deliberate. But for a specific subset of filmmakers who came up during the Pixar and Marvel era, the personal history is with Iger. Whether that history has business value at Thrive or just personal value — that's genuinely open.
MARCUS Okay — I'll concede the Iger-as-deal-sourcing-engine argument. The tech credits are real. The relationships are real. The failed bets matter too — Maker Studios cost Disney close to a billion dollars when you factor in the write-down — but Thrive is betting ten billion dollars across a portfolio. They can absorb some variance. Kushner knows what he's buying. I'm less convinced Iger knows what he's selling, but that's a different question.
ELENA RTL Group has the regulatory green light on its Sky Deutschland acquisition. The deal closes June first. RTL Deutschland CEO Stephan Schmitter will run the combined entity, with a board that brings in executives from both companies. The synergy target: around two hundred and fifty million euros annually within three years. Sky Deutschland, for context, is coming out of the Comcast stable — Comcast is stepping back from German pay-TV, and RTL, owned by Bertelsmann, is stepping in.
MARCUS The structural bet is: traditional commercial broadcaster absorbs pay-TV operator to build a combined free-to-air, pay-TV, and streaming platform. The theory is that scale plus subscriber base plus advertising revenue creates something that can survive the streaming squeeze. The U.S. ran this exact playbook. Comcast bought NBCU. Disney absorbed Fox's entertainment assets. The results were complicated.
ELENA Comcast got distribution and content — and streaming still ate the margins they were protecting. Disney spent eighty-five billion on Fox and spent the next five years digesting assets they probably overpaid for. RTL is making the same structural move with less capital, in a market where European broadcasters haven't yet found stable footing against Netflix.
MARCUS The synergy target is the tell. Two hundred and fifty million euros over three years — that's a consolidation math argument, not a growth math argument. They're betting they can squeeze out cost rather than add revenue. In a category where the revenue trend is moving toward streaming and away from linear and pay-TV, consolidating legacy assets buys time. The question is whether it buys the right time.
RINA The creative piece I keep thinking about: Sky Deutschland was the prestige content home in Germany. Sky Atlantic there ran HBO originals and developed original German-language drama — that was the identity. RTL is commercial television at scale — Fremantle, game shows, reality formats. What happens to the prestige brand when the commercial broadcaster runs the whole entity? We've seen this story before.
ELENA The HBO-under-AT&T version is the cautionary tale. Corporate parent with very different DNA trying to steward a prestige brand. That experiment did not end well for the prestige part.
MARCUS Schmitter said the goal is to align the combined organization with — his words — "the future of television, particularly the streaming business." That language tells you everything. The strategy is to pivot both assets toward streaming simultaneously. The risk is that RTL's commercial identity dominates, Sky Deutschland's prestige subscribers migrate to Netflix or Apple TV Plus, and the combined entity ends up with scale but no differentiation.
ELENA The Cannes market opens in three weeks. Every European broadcaster and co-production partner is in positioning mode right now. This deal closing June first — right after Cannes — means RTL arrives at that market as a combined entity for the first time. That changes who wants to be in business with them and at what price.
MARCUS Worth watching whether the combined RTL shows up at Cannes signaling creative ambition or just announcing a cost-cutting operation in a deal suit. Those are two very different messages to the international production community. One of them attracts partners. The other one accelerates the subscriber migration Rina just described.
ELENA Michael Jackson biopic Michael had a record first day internationally on Wednesday — eighteen point five million dollars across eighty-two markets, including Tuesday PLF previews. Wednesday alone, backing out the previews, was sixteen point six million. That's a record first day for a musical biopic in most of those territories. China opened Friday, a few others are staggered through the end of the week — and Michael opens domestically this weekend.
MARCUS The distribution structure is the actual business story. Lionsgate is a mid-major — two hundred million dollar budget is a significant swing for them. They pre-sold foreign rights to Universal, which handles international. That hedging strategy is what makes a bet-the-quarter title survivable if domestic underperforms. The question I'm flagging: does the Lionsgate-Universal co-distribution model become a template for other mid-majors trying to play at tentpole scale without tentpole balance sheets?
ELENA The audience score on Rotten Tomatoes was ninety-six percent on previews — that's the word of mouth you need for a biopic to run past opening weekend. The international first day is a strong leading indicator. This weekend's domestic number tells the rest of the story.
ELENA Mortal Kombat Two is tracking for a forty to fifty million dollar domestic opening when it opens May eighth. For reference: the first film opened at twenty-two million in twenty twenty-one, during COVID protocols. R-rated, gaming I-P, post-superhero summer. That's a meaningful multiplier on the baseline.
MARCUS Gaming I-P is working where studio franchise I-P is stalling. The Mortal Kombat brand has global recognition across every demographic, and the R rating signals creative fidelity rather than family-friendly dilution. If this number holds, the competition for gaming rights accelerates significantly — every studio building its next franchise pipeline is watching May eighth. Street Fighter opens in October. Two data points make a trend.
ELENA Rina, this one is yours.
RINA Sony's faith-based label Affirm Films has an October sixteenth date in the U.S. for the Brazilian remake of Flywheel: Ignition of the Soul — the Kendrick Brothers' two-thousand-and-three debut. It opens in Brazil and Latin America in September. This came directly out of The Forge performing well in Brazil — the Kendrick Brothers have a real, growing audience there that they never specifically targeted. What I find sharp: Sony took a locally produced remake of an American faith-based film and is releasing it internationally on a staggered calendar. The content strategy starts with an actual audience, not a market hypothesis.
MARCUS Faith-based international is an undercovered distribution play. The Kendrick Brothers built genuine global reach without ever chasing global markets. Audiences found them. Sony is now monetizing that organic footprint — low budget, high affinity, minimal marketing cost in a market that already wants the product. That's a strong risk-adjusted return. More studios should be watching this model.
ELENA Paramount is co-producing and co-financing Spyglass Media's Heart Eyes Two — Valentine's Day horror, global theatrical release, February eleventh, twenty twenty-eight.
MARCUS Paramount booking out its twenty twenty-eight calendar while in merger limbo is a deliberate signal: this organization functions, the pipeline continues, business as usual. Valentine's horror is a proven niche — Happy Death Day, the Scream franchise date plays. The merger subtext is real though: Paramount is building a franchise asset now so there's something to hand off to the combined entity on day one. The twenty twenty-eight date gives Heart Eyes room to breathe — three years from the first film is the right cadence for this kind of property.
ELENA Spyglass brings the I-P and the creative team, Paramount brings distribution and co-financing. That's a sensible risk split for a sequel to a film that proved the concept without lighting the world on fire. You build the second one bigger.
ELENA Focus Features sets September eleventh for The Uprising — Paul Greengrass directing Andrew Garfield in a medieval English rebellion against King Richard II. That date is Focus reading the fall calendar clearly: Avengers Secret Wars will be through its theatrical run by then, and the field opens for prestige adult drama with serious awards runway.
MARCUS Focus is playing the September calendar the way a good poker player plays position. They're not trying to outspend Marvel — they're waiting for Marvel to finish, then claiming the best open territory. Greengrass and Garfield is an awards-season argument. September eleventh gives it a long runway into November for the conversation to build. Specialty distributors who pick their spots carefully tend to outperform the ones fighting for opening weekend scraps against the tent. This is the pick.
ELENA Two things to watch. The DOJ silence on the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger since the February deadline is the loudest signal in the room right now. Ellison's dinner raised both the stakes and the scrutiny — watch for any regulatory movement in the next thirty days. And this weekend: Michael opens domestically. That first domestic number is the read on whether a two-hundred-million-dollar music biopic with complicated I-P history can open at a level that justifies the theatrical bet Lionsgate made. The international start is encouraging. The domestic opening is the real test.
MARCUS Today: dinner diplomacy, venture capital repositioning, and a German broadcasting merger that's seen the American version of itself already. Three stories, one theme — everyone buying proximity to something. Ellison bought a dinner. Iger rejoined a tech fund. RTL bought a subscriber base. Raskin stood on the National Mall and called it an oligarch's dinner. Kushner said Iger knows exactly what he's building. RTL said two hundred and fifty million euros in synergies. What none of them mentioned is what happens when the proximity doesn't buy what you paid for. That's usually when things get genuinely interesting.