David Ellison’s name is everywhere right now — and for good reason. As Chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance, he’s currently at the center of one of the largest, messiest, and most consequential media mergers in Hollywood history: a fight over Warner Bros. Discovery that has pulled in Netflix, a dozen state attorneys general, federal judges, and the fate of CNN itself. If you’ve heard his name trending and want the full picture — his age, his billionaire family, his wife, his career, his net worth, and exactly what’s happening with the Warner Bros. deal right now — here’s everything currently known about David Ellison.
Quick Facts: David Ellison Bio Table
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Full Name | David Ferris Ellison |
| Date of Birth | January 9, 1983 |
| Age | 43 years old |
| Birthplace | Santa Clara County, California, USA |
| Nationality | American |
| Profession | Media Executive, Film Producer, Former Actor |
| Current Title | Chairman & CEO, Paramount Skydance Corporation |
| Company Founded | Skydance Media (2010) |
| Education | University of Southern California (withdrew to pursue film) |
| Marital Status | Married |
| Wife | Sandra Lynn Modic (m. |
Who Is David Ellison? The Basics
David Ellison is a 43-year-old American media executive and film producer who has gone from being best known as “Larry Ellison’s son” to being one of the most talked-about power players in Hollywood in his own right. As Chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance — the company formed when his studio, Skydance Media, merged with Paramount Global in 2025 — Ellison now controls one of the oldest and most storied entertainment companies in America, and he’s currently locked in a sprawling, headline-dominating battle to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, home to HBO, CNN, and the Warner Bros. film studio.
That fight — which pitted Ellison against streaming giant Netflix in one of the biggest corporate takeover battles in recent memory — is the reason his name is trending today. But there is a lot more to his story than mergers and litigation.
Early Life and Family Background
David Ferris Ellison was born on January 9, 1983, in Santa Clara County, California, the elder of two children born to Barbara Boothe and Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder and longtime CEO of Oracle Corporation, one of the largest software companies in the world. David grew up in Woodside, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, raised primarily by his mother, who nurtured his early love of film. His younger sister, Megan Ellison, would go on to become a major Hollywood producer in her own right, founding Annapurna Pictures.
Being the son of one of the wealthiest men in the world gave David Ellison a launchpad that few aspiring filmmakers ever get, and he has never shied away from that reality — his career has always existed in the unusual space where Hollywood ambition meets Silicon Valley fortune.
Ellison briefly attended the University of Southern California, but withdrew before completing his degree to pursue acting and filmmaking full-time.
From Actor to Studio Founder: David Ellison’s Path Into Hollywood
Before he was a studio chief, David Ellison tried his hand in front of the camera. He appeared in a handful of films in the mid-to-late 2000s, including the 2006 World War I drama Flyboys alongside James Franco (which he also helped finance), the independent film Little Fish, Strange Pond, the 2009 sports comedy Hole in One, and a guest appearance on the TV series Leverage in 2010. It was on the set of Hole in One that he met Sandra Lynn Modic, the actress and singer who would later become his wife.
Acting, however, wasn’t where Ellison’s real ambitions lay. In 2006, he founded Skydance Productions (later Skydance Media), taking its name from his lifelong passion for aviation — Ellison is a licensed pilot with instrument ratings across helicopters, aerobatics, commercial aviation, and both fixed-wing and multi-engine aircraft. At just 20 years old, in 2003, he had performed with Sean D. Tucker’s “Stars of Tomorrow” aerobatic team at the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh airshow, one of the largest aviation gatherings in the world.
Skydance’s business model was unusual for a young production company: it raised hundreds of millions of dollars to co-finance films with an established studio partner, Paramount Pictures, giving Ellison a seat at the table on major franchise films almost immediately. Under that arrangement and its later expansions, Skydance had a hand in a run of major blockbusters, including the Mission: Impossible franchise (Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation, Fallout, and beyond), Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond, World War Z, Jack Reacher, the Academy Award-nominated True Grit, and — most famously — 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick, a global box office phenomenon that earned Ellison an Academy Award nomination as a producer and cemented his reputation as a serious Hollywood player, not just a wealthy hobbyist.
Skydance grew steadily under his leadership, expanding into television production in 2013 and later into animation and interactive/gaming divisions. In 2018, the company entered a partnership with Chinese conglomerate Tencent, and in 2020, a strategic capital expansion involving RedBird Capital and South Korea’s CJ E&M pushed Skydance’s valuation to roughly $2.3 billion.
Marriage and Family Life
David Ellison married actress and singer Sandra Lynn Modic on October 1, 2011, in a Palm Springs, California ceremony that drew Hollywood attention of its own — Mission: Impossible star Tom Cruise, a close collaborator of Ellison’s, attended with his then-wife Katie Holmes, and reportedly got into a good-natured dance-off with Ellison’s billionaire father, Larry, at the reception.
Sandra Lynn Modic, born in California in 1985, had a brief acting career in the late 2000s before shifting her focus to music, building an independent career as a country-pop singer-songwriter under the stage name “Sandra Lynn.” She released an EP titled Sandra Lynn in 2014 and another, Fight, in 2018, later performing at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium.
David and Sandra have two children together. The couple has kept their family life notably private given Ellison’s public profile, rarely discussing their children publicly, though they are occasionally photographed together at industry premieres and galas.
The Deal of the Decade: Skydance, Paramount, and the Battle for Warner Bros. Discovery
Here is the story that has made David Ellison one of the most talked-about executives in America — and why his name is dominating headlines right now.
Skydance merges with Paramount. After a previous attempt to combine Skydance with Paramount fell apart in 2024 when then-controlling shareholder Shari Redstone walked away from negotiations, the deal was eventually revived and completed. In August 2025, Skydance Media officially closed its roughly $8 billion acquisition of Paramount Global, forming the new Paramount Skydance Corporation, with Ellison installed as chairman and CEO. The closing followed FCC approval and came after Paramount agreed to a $16 million settlement of a lawsuit brought by President Donald Trump over a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris — a settlement that drew sharp criticism from press-freedom advocates. “Today marks Day One of a new Paramount,” Ellison told staff and shareholders as the deal closed, promising to blend “the creative heart of Hollywood with the innovative spirit of Silicon Valley.”
The fight for Warner Bros. Discovery begins. Ellison wasted little time setting his sights on an even bigger target. Beginning in September 2025, Paramount Skydance made a series of unsolicited offers to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery — the company behind HBO, HBO Max, CNN, the Warner Bros. film studio, and a vast library of iconic franchises. WBD’s board initially rejected the approaches and instead opened a formal sale process, putting the company up for auction in October 2025.
Netflix enters the ring. The auction quickly became a two-horse race between Paramount Skydance and streaming giant Netflix. In December 2025, WBD’s board agreed to sell its streaming and studio operations — including HBO Max and the Warner Bros. film studio — to Netflix in a deal valued at roughly $72 billion, and unanimously recommended shareholders vote in favor of it. Paramount refused to back down.
A hostile bid and a proxy war. Rather than accept defeat, Ellison escalated. Paramount Skydance filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. Discovery and its CEO David Zaslav, launched a hostile tender offer directly to WBD shareholders, and announced plans to nominate its own slate of directors to WBD’s board — triggering a full-blown proxy fight. Paramount extended its tender offer deadline multiple times through January and February 2026 while raising its bid, eventually offering $31 per share in cash, a figure Ellison himself noted on CNBC was 63% higher than Paramount’s original offer the previous September.
Paramount wins — and Netflix walks away. After weeks of dueling offers, public sparring, and a brief window in which Netflix granted WBD a waiver to negotiate directly with Paramount for a “best and final” bid, Netflix ultimately dropped out of the bidding war in late February 2026. Paramount Skydance’s offer prevailed, and WBD shareholders formally approved the roughly $108–111 billion transaction in late April 2026.
The fight isn’t over. Just as Ellison appeared to have won, a new obstacle emerged. In July 2026, attorneys general from twelve U.S. states filed suit to block the merger entirely, arguing it would sharply reduce competition across film distribution, cable television, and streaming. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order preventing the deal from closing, and — in a significant setback for Ellison — later scheduled the antitrust trial for March 2027 rather than in the fall of 2026 as Paramount had hoped, a delay reported to be costing the company roughly $7 million per day in penalty fees tied to the merger agreement. Paramount and Warner Bros. subsequently agreed to formally push the deal’s closing back to 2027.
Ellison goes public. Facing sustained criticism — including from within the ranks of journalists at CNN, a network he would inherit control of if the deal closes — Ellison broke his public silence in early August 2026 with a guest essay in the New York Times. He argued that opposition to the merger isn’t really about market competition at all, but about “whether I can be trusted as a steward of Warner’s CNN,” and defended his political independence, saying he has voted for both Democrats and Republicans and holds a mix of liberal and conservative values. He has repeatedly promised to preserve editorial independence at CNN and CBS News as those brands transition toward streaming under his ownership.
Ellison has also accused Netflix of running a “scorched-earth campaign” to undermine the merger with regulators even after walking away from its own bid, a claim Netflix has publicly dismissed as “absurd.” As of now, the outcome of the antitrust trial — and the ultimate fate of one of the largest media mergers in history — remains unresolved, with Ellison telling analysts on an earnings call that he remains confident Paramount will “win at trial” while also signaling he’s open to a settlement.
David Ellison’s Net Worth
David Ellison’s personal net worth is frequently confused with that of his father, and the two figures are wildly different. Independent estimates of David’s own net worth — separate from his father’s fortune — generally place it in the neighborhood of $500 million, built primarily through his ownership stakes in Skydance Media and now Paramount Skydance, along with his history as a film producer and executive. Some looser estimates that factor in his family’s broader financial backing and equity position have placed figures much higher, but these are not independently verified.
His father, Larry Ellison, is an entirely different story: the Oracle co-founder is consistently ranked among the wealthiest people on earth, with a fortune that has been estimated at anywhere from roughly $230 billion to well over $300 billion depending on the source and Oracle’s stock price at the time. That family fortune has been instrumental in backing David’s biggest moves, including the financing behind both the original Paramount-Skydance merger and the Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition — a point Ellison’s critics frequently raise when questioning whether his rise reflects deal-making talent, inherited capital, or both.
Personal Life: Flying, Family, and Hollywood Ties
Away from boardrooms and merger litigation, a few details define David Ellison’s personal life:
- Aviation is his lifelong passion. He is a licensed pilot qualified across multiple aircraft categories, including aerobatics, and performed in a nationally recognized aerobatic showcase at just 20 years old. Skydance itself is named for his love of flying.
- He has deep, long-running ties to Tom Cruise. Skydance’s early co-financing partnership with Paramount put Ellison behind several Mission: Impossible films, and Cruise has remained a close collaborator and friend for nearly two decades, attending Ellison’s wedding in 2011.
- He comes from a two-track Hollywood family. His sister, Megan Ellison, built her own reputation as an acclaimed independent film producer through Annapurna Pictures, giving the Ellison siblings parallel, high-profile careers in the same industry.
- He and his wife keep their children largely out of the spotlight, a notable choice given how much public attention both the Warner Bros. deal and his family’s wealth have generated.
Frequently Asked Questions About David Ellison
How old is David Ellison? David Ellison was born on January 9, 1983, making him 43 years old.
Is David Ellison married? Yes. He married actress and singer Sandra Lynn Modic on October 1, 2011, in Palm Springs, California. They have two children together.
Who is David Ellison’s father? His father is Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder and longtime CEO of Oracle Corporation, one of the wealthiest people in the world.
What is David Ellison’s net worth? Independent estimates put his personal net worth at roughly $500 million, separate from his father’s far larger fortune, which has been estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
What company does David Ellison run? He is Chairman and CEO of Paramount Skydance Corporation, formed when his company, Skydance Media, merged with Paramount Global in 2025. He also founded Skydance Media in 2010 (originally Skydance Productions in 2006).
Why is David Ellison in the news right now? He is at the center of Paramount Skydance’s roughly $108–111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal that beat out a rival bid from Netflix but is now facing an antitrust lawsuit from twelve state attorneys general, with a trial scheduled for March 2027. He recently wrote a public New York Times essay defending the deal and his fitness to oversee CNN.
Did David Ellison beat Netflix in the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery? Yes. After Warner Bros. Discovery initially agreed to sell its streaming and studio businesses to Netflix in December 2025, Paramount Skydance launched a hostile bid and proxy fight, ultimately prevailing when Netflix withdrew from the bidding war in late February 2026. WBD shareholders approved Paramount’s offer in April 2026.
Does David Ellison have children? Yes, he and his wife Sandra Lynn Modic have two children, whose details the couple has kept largely private.
The Bottom Line
David Ellison’s story is, in many ways, a Hollywood story about Hollywood itself — a producer’s kid turned pilot turned actor turned studio founder who used his family’s extraordinary wealth to climb from co-financing Mission: Impossible sequels to controlling one of the oldest studios in America, and very nearly a second one on top of it. Whether Paramount Skydance’s fight to absorb Warner Bros. Discovery ultimately survives its antitrust trial in 2027, David Ellison has already reshaped the balance of power in Hollywood — and made himself, for better or worse, one of the most consequential media executives of his generation.
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