{"id":867797,"date":"2026-10-02T03:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T03:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/867797\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T03:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T03:18:09","slug":"paramount-wbd-deal-architect-gerry-cardinale-says-most-of-6b-in-expected-cost-savings-will-not-be-layoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/867797\/","title":{"rendered":"Paramount-WBD Deal Architect Gerry Cardinale Says Most Of $6B In Expected Cost Savings Will Not Be Layoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tGerry Cardinale<\/a>, Paramount<\/a> board member and principal architect of the company\u2019s imminent merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, insists that most of the deal\u2019s cost savings will not come from layoffs.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe company has promised investors it will deliver $6 billion in cost savings from the $110 billion transaction, but Cardinale maintains that non-labor costs will make up the majority. A Hollywood community already reeling from Covid, labor unrest and overall consolidation and contraction has assumed that thousands of workers will be pink-slipped. Independent analyses have projected a similar outcome, and a look back at prior mergers shows they tend to leave a lot of workers out in the cold. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat notion that $6 billion of cost-related synergies means you\u2019re firing all these people is just completely antiquated,\u201d Cardinale said in an appearance at the Bloomberg Screentime conference Thursday. \u201cIf you look at what we have in front of us, most the majority of those cost synergies are related to non-labor spend. We\u2019re going to unify the text stacks across direct-to-consumer. We already did that with Paramount+ and Pluto and BET+. We\u2019ve already done a hell of a job. Then we are going to do the same thing when we bring the HBO universe into this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe $110 billion merger is due to close Tuesday, following a lengthy legal battle and a year of negotiations involving multiple suitors. <\/p>\n

\n\tReal estate is another area of focus in terms of cost-cutting, Cardinale said. \u201cWe have real estate at Paramount, when we bought Paramount [in 2025] that people at Paramount didn\u2019t even know they had,\u201d he said. Plus, he continued, \u201cthere\u2019s no enterprise resource planning system. You don\u2019t even know what spending goes on across all the divisions. We\u2019re going to optimize for the way we spend marketing dollars. There\u2019s so much that we can do. And again, in any industry that is challenged, any industry, you\u2019re going to have labor-related cost rationalization, but that\u2019s not what\u2019s driving this.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCardinale was asked about CEO<\/a> David Ellison<\/a> and what has positioned him as one of Hollywood\u2019s leading figures despite a fairly brief LinkedIn page in terms of running major companies.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLook at him. He\u2019s 43 years old, and look at the talent that he attracts,\u201d the RedBird Capital<\/a> founder said. \u201cPeople are incredibly loyal to him. You can\u2019t fake that. And let me tell you, there\u2019s no last name in the world that delivers that. You either ar it or you\u2019re not. And people want to work for him because he\u2019s genuine. authentic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCardinale also pushed back on the perception that Ellison got where he is purely through nepotism given that his father, Larry Ellison, is one of the world\u2019s richest men. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTo go back to the name, you know, he could be a total jerk. This guy is the most humble, nicest guy I think I\u2019ve ever met,\u201d Cardinale said. \u201cHe\u2019s not about the glitz and the glamor. He really cares about the industry. He cares about the people, both on the talent side, the content creator side, the people who he\u2019s, you know, attracted to come here, uh, and, you know, he\u2019s gonna do this for the rest of his professional career. And he\u2019s young. And so I actually think he\u2019s the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEllison as an individual \u201creally motivated me to bet my firm and my career\u201d on the WBD merger, Cardinale said. \u201cThe only way Hollywood is gonna move into this next phase, and level the playing field with the guys up north, is you\u2019ve got to turn yourself into more of a technology company.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBen Affleck, who has been involved with RedBird on multiple ventures, found \u201cthe right way for Hollywood to go figure out how to level the playing field against the Silicon Valley guys\u201d by founding an AI company. He later sold the company, Interpositive, to Netflix. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSilicon Valley guys. I have a lot of respect for them,\u201d Cardinale added. \u201cThey think they\u2019re the IP in the equation. They\u2019re distribution. The IP is the IP in the equation. And what I\u2019m trying to do, and partnering with David and his passion, is to level a playing field for the guys here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gerry Cardinale, Paramount board member and principal architect of the company\u2019s imminent merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, insists…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":867798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28,17598,18205,365960,14007,4208,228983,4209],"class_list":["post-867797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ceo","tag-david-ellison","tag-gerry-cardinale","tag-mergers-and-acquisitions","tag-paramount","tag-paramount-wbd","tag-redbird-capital"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=867797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/867798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=867797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=867797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=867797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}