Warner Bros. and Paramount Games Businesses Unite Under Tony Driscoll at Skydance

Warner Bros. Games and Paramount Games Studio are being brought together under Tony Driscoll within Skydance’s games and experiences division, according to an October 6 staff email reported by Variety. The email from Skydance president Andy Gordon came on the day Paramount completed its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.

The move puts franchises from Harry Potter and Mortal Kombat to Star Trek and SpongeBob SquarePants under shared games leadership. The memos reported so far do not say what changes for any studio or game.

How the new company came together

Paramount announced on October 6 that it had completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The combined company is named Skydance and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SKYD. Its brands include Paramount, Warner Bros., HBO, CBS and CNN.

The games reshuffle was announced the same day. In Gordon’s email, the games and experiences divisions of Paramount and Warner Bros. were combined into a single division under shared leadership. Driscoll becomes president of games and experiences and will also lead corporate strategy and development.

What the combined division covers

According to Variety, the merger combines the newly formed Paramount Games Studio with Warner Bros. Games’ internal developers. Variety also listed the franchises the division will oversee.

The franchise list describes the division’s portfolio; it does not mean every game based on those properties is developed or published in-house.

Avalanche Software is the studio behind Hogwarts Legacy, Variety noted.

Who Tony Driscoll is

Driscoll is not new to the job of running Paramount’s games. In June, Paramount formed Paramount Games Studio, bringing all of Paramount’s and Skydance’s game studios together, with Driscoll as president. Paramount said his career includes roles at Epic Games, Warner Bros., AT&T and Disney.

At the time, he described games as “a core pillar of our content strategy alongside film, television, and streaming.” The studio used the same launch to show Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin, an action game being developed by Platinum Games, and to detail Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game.

In his own memo on October 6, Driscoll said his first priority in the coming weeks is meeting as many of his new team as he can “from LA to London, Montreal to Tokyo, and beyond,” Variety reported. The experiences side he now runs includes Warner Bros.’ studio tours and licensed attractions such as Nickelodeon-branded parks in malls, The Hollywood Reporter noted.

Company-wide layoffs expected; impact on games remains unclear

The bigger question for game developers is jobs. In a separate memo on October 6, which Variety published in full, Skydance chairman and chief executive David Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz wrote: “Integrating two companies will bring change, including difficult decisions that affect our workforce.”

The same memo named games as part of the company’s storytelling plans: “In games, it means worlds like Hogwarts Legacy and Mortal Kombat.”

Skydance is targeting more than $6 billion in annual run-rate savings, which it calls synergies, within three years. Its closing announcement said they would come mainly from technology, integration and procurement, marketing and real estate. Variety reported that the company had not said how many jobs would be cut.

The CEO memo does not say whether any game studio will close or any project will change, and Variety’s report on Gordon’s email does not mention either.

A familiar name on the board

The new board also includes a familiar name from games. Skydance named Bobby Kotick, the former chief executive of Activision Blizzard, as an independent director on October 6.

For players, the practical effect is still unknown. The announcements so far set out who is in charge, not which games get made next.