Skydance Media and National Amusements have tentatively agreed a new deal for the takeover of Paramount Global, according to several media reports, just a few weeks after the companies’ initial deal dramatically collapsed.
Reporting on the surprise development on Tuesday (July 2) the Wall Street Journal said Skydance has reached a “preliminary agreement” to buy Shari Redstone’s National Amusements and merge with Paramount, which is majority owned by National Amusements.
The new deal will be referred to a special committee of Paramount directors for review, the Journal added, and Skydance and National Amusements have agreed to a 45-day period during which other bidders can make offers for the studio.
Potential bidders are believed to include former studio mogul Edgar Bronfman Jr, producer Steven Paul and former Paramount Pictures chief Barry Diller, whose interest emerged this week.
According to several reports late on Tuesday, the new Skydance deal calls for David Ellison’s company to pay $1.75bn to the Redstone family for National Amusements. Under the long-negotiated deal that was apparently called off by Shari Redstone three weeks ago Skydance was reportedly set to pay $1.7bn to the family, as well as $4.5bn to other Paramount shareholders and $1.5bn to pay down the studio’s debt.
A Paramount representative had no comment on the new deal reports and neither Skydance nor National Amusements responded immediately to requests for comment.
The latest development in the Paramount sale saga came on the same day as a report from Bloomberg that the studio is in exclusive talks to sell its cable channel Black Entertainment Network (BET) to a group including BET CEO Scott Mills and Chinh Chu, head of private equity firm CC Capital.
The group, which had talks last year to buy BET for $2bn, is now considering a bid of $1.6bn-$1.7bn, said the report.
At a town hall meeting with employees last week, Paramount co-CEO George Cheeks confirmed that asset sales were being contemplated. According to a source, Cheeks said: “We’re looking at selling certain Paramount-owned assets – in fact we’ve already hired bankers to assist us in this process – and we’ll use the proceeds to help pay down debt and strengthen our balance sheet.”
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