David Ellison reaffirmed his pledge to release 30 films theatrically once Paramount merges with Warner Bros. Discovery.
“As we have said consistently, we are committed to delivering a broad pipeline of high-quality storytelling, including 15 theatrical films per year per studio, for a total of at least 30 films annually,” Ellison told analysts during a conference call on Monday.
“We really believe that movies should be seen in theatres,” he added.
Ellison argued the company has “already demonstrated our ability to increase output,” noting that Paramount will release at least 15 films in 2026. That’s up from eight films in 2025. Warner Bros. also fell short of the mark that Ellison set for the studio, releasing 11 films last year
Ellison praised the year that Warner Bros. had in 2025, calling it “a powerhouse slate,” while crediting such hits as “Superman” and “Minecraft” with “propelling” the company to $4 billion in box office revenue. He did not namecheck “Sinners” or “One Battle After Another,” two films from Warners that have dominated the awards season.
Netflix, which previously had a deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery until Paramount blew its offer out of the water with its $110 billion pact, faced opposition from theatre owners who worried the streamer would undermine their business and release fewer films in cinemas. The company’s chief Ted Sarandos tried to assuage their concerns, maintaining that Netflix would honor its commitments, but many exhibitors doubted his sincerity.
Ellison framed his commitment to theatrical in personal terms, noting that as head of the production company Skydance, he had seen firsthand the power of a traditional big screen release.
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“When you look at the theatrical space, which is something we deeply, deeply believe in, large franchises and big pieces of intellectual property are launched in theaters, period,” Ellison said. “I personally learned this lesson in 2022. We basically had the largest theatrical box office film with ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ which became a cultural phenomenon, grossing $1.5 billion.”
“At the same time,” Ellison added, “we released ‘The Adam Project’ that summer on Netflix, which, at the time of its release, was the most successful film in Netflix… [it] previewed incredibly well with audiences but did have a different cultural resonance.”
How a theatrical release can propel a film into the cultural conversation influenced Ellison’s thinking when it came to overseeing Paramount and — if the deal is consummated — Warner Bros. Pictures.
“We said from Day 1 when we acquired Paramount that we weren’t going to be in the business of making movies directly for streaming,” Ellison said.
Ellison’s team hasn’t always been as enamoured with the theatrical experience. Jeff Shell, who serves as Paramount’s president, pushed to reduce the theatrical window (the term for the amount of time a film plays exclusively in cinemas) from several months to 17 days when he served as head of NBCUniversal during the pandemic. But Ellison said the combined Paramount and Warner Bros. will honor a 45-day theatrical window before their films debut on home entertainment platforms.
Despite Ellison’s promises, there is skepticism about his ability to find and develop enough films to, in his words, “pierce the zeitgeist,” particularly given the more than $78 billion in debt that the combined companies will shoulder.
“If any studio could release more than 15 wide releases per year — a little more than one per month — and be successful, they would,” David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research, recently told Variety. “In the course of one year, there aren’t more than 15 broad-appeal stories that a studio can develop, produce, market and distribute effectively around the world; 30 wide releases is extremely unrealistic.”
From Variety US