{"id":634746,"date":"2026-10-03T01:18:06","date_gmt":"2026-10-03T01:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/634746\/"},"modified":"2026-10-03T01:18:06","modified_gmt":"2026-10-03T01:18:06","slug":"israeli-businessman-appointed-to-lead-operations-amid-paramount-warner-merger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/634746\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli businessman appointed to lead operations amid Paramount-Warner merger"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jewish entertainment mogul David Ellison<\/a> has appointed an Israeli businessman to help lead operations at the new company being created by his controversial merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery. The move came days after a settlement cleared the way for the combined mega-studio to form.<\/p>\n

Ynon Kreiz, the Israeli-American former CEO of Mattel, is joining the company as Ellison\u2019s co-CEO. The merged entity will be known simply as Skydance<\/a> \u2013 the name of Ellison\u2019s production company \u2013 which previously merged with Paramount, Ellison announced Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have big goals for Skydance, and we intend to pursue them with passion, imagination and a willingness to take smart risks,\u201d Ellison announced Friday in his inaugural post on X\/Twitter.<\/p>\n

The mogul\u2019s entertainment and media ambitions have attracted considerable negative attention over the last few years \u2014 attention that, in some instances, has been directed at his pro-Israel beliefs and connections as the entertainment industry writ large has also weathered growing accusations of anti-Jewish bias<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Most recently, the actor Mark Ruffalo has drawn accusations of antisemitism<\/a> \u2013 and some support \u2013 for suggesting that Ellison\u2019s planned $110 billion merger would be a boon to Israel\u2019s \u201capartheid system of oppression\u201d via Oracle, the tech surveillance company owned by Ellison\u2019s father Larry that does business in Israel.<\/p>\n

Under Ellison\u2019s leadership, Paramount has long shown pro-Israel leanings. Last year, the company was the only major American studio to issue a public rebuke of a petition to boycott Israeli film institutions, circulated by many big-name actors, while distributing multiple documentaries about Israelis in the shadow of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks.<\/p>\n

Ellison also attracted scrutiny for appointing Bari Weiss, the Jewish and pro-Israel media innovator and pundit, as editor-in-chief of CBS News.<\/p>\n

Weiss\u2019s tenure at CBS has been marked by controversy, with mass walkouts of top talent and a ratings nosedive. Initial industry speculation that Ellison would ask her to take the reins at Warner-owned CNN has been tamped down in recent days, with The Wall Street Journal and other outlets now reporting that Ellison has asked the news network\u2019s CEO, Mark Thompson, to stay put for at least the next year.<\/p>\n

Kreiz, the former Mattel CEO behind the smash-hit Barbie movie, has been known to support pro-Israel causes as well. In 2023, he attended a screening of footage of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks organized by Israeli actress Gal Gadot at Los Angeles\u2019s Museum of Tolerance. Outside, brawls broke out between pro- and anti-Israel demonstrators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jewish entertainment mogul David Ellison has appointed an Israeli businessman to help lead operations at the new company…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":634747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[111,102613,1903,146,878,51,42,74,43,4523,58,40,38,41,39,1032],"class_list":["post-634746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-antisemitism","tag-businessman","tag-diaspora","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-hamas","tag-headlines","tag-israelis","tag-news","tag-paramount","tag-the-october-7-massacre","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/634747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}