Hollywood has spent a couple of years trying to figure out Skydance CEO David Ellison, who now runs the companies formerly known as Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery.
Now they have a new character to get to know: Ynon Kreiz, Ellison’s newly appointed co-CEO.
Kreiz, who is expected to co-host a press event with Ellison on Tuesday night, comes to Skydance from Mattel, where he is best-known for two things: engineering a deal with Warner Bros. and actress Margot Robbie to produce the colossally successful “Barbie” movie — and taking an ax to the toymaker’s payroll, by laying off 22% of its workforce in one fell swoop.
At Skydance, no one expects him to be making deals with studios and talent — that will be Ellison’s purview. Instead, Kreiz will be expected to take on the grim task of finding $6 billion in savings over 3 years — a job that will likely involve meaningful layoffs.
It’s a job that has drawn repeated comparisons to Gunnar Wiedenfels, the former CFO at WBD, who repeatedly hacked at that company’s P&L via layoffs and other cost-saving measures, like mothballing TV shows and movies. “He’s Gunnar,” one of Kreiz’s friends told me this week.
But few people outside the company knew who Wiedenfels was. Instead, people in and out of Hollywood focused their attention and ire on David Zaslav, the spotlight-loving WBD CEO.
This time around, it seems clear that Ellison will be the public face of Skydance, and the one who gets to do fun stuff like schmoozing with stars. Kreiz will be the one getting his hands very dirty.
People who’ve worked with him in the past say he’s cut out for the role.
“He’s very serious,” says Candle Media co-CEO Kevin Mayer, who negotiated with Kreiz when Mayer was a top executive at Disney, and Kreiz was CEO of Maker Studios, a web video startup Disney ended up buying in 2014.
“He’s unflappable, and is willing to take on the heaviest of heavy lifts.”
Kreiz, who declined to comment for this story, arrives at Skydance with a résumé stocked with media bona fides: He ran Endemol, the Dutch TV production company, back when it was a powerhouse; he helped Maker, founded by a group of young YouTubers-makers, scale up into something Disney was willing to buy for $500 million; and he led Mattel’s move into IP licensing, which also gave us this year’s “Masters of the Universe” movie.
People who’ve worked with him describe him as an exceptionally high-energy executive.
“Ynon will get on an airplane and fly across the country for a meeting if it’s critical, and fly back the next morning,” says Upfront Ventures’ Mark Suster, whose VC firm was the primary investor in Maker.
Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl, who has known Kreiz for decades, says Kreiz has a tough demeanor that’s a little misleading. “Ynon’s not a teddy bear. But he’s a warm person,” he says. Kyncl says Kreiz and his wife are the first people in Kyncl’s emergency file — the people his kids are supposed to ask for help if anything happens to Kyncl and his wife.
Kreiz has demerits on his record: Disney never figured out what to do with Maker, and Kreiz left Disney a couple of years after selling to them. And while Kreiz cut Mattel’s costs, he struggled to grow the company — while Barbie sales shot up after the movie’s blockbuster success in 2023, they fell again over the next two years, and eventually returned to pre-movie levels. Mattel’s stock has been listing for some time.
And while Kreiz is a veteran executive, he’s never been in a position like this: While he’s co-CEO of the giant media conglomerate, he’s definitely not running the place. That person is David Ellison, who engineered acquisitions of Paramount and then WBD, backed by his father Larry Ellison’s fortune. Tellingly, Ellison’s title remains CEO, not co-CEO.
And while Skydance won’t have the same kind of pressure from shareholders that troubled Zaslav at WBD — the two Ellisons have effective control of the whole company — Kreiz will have to contend with the people who own the company’s staggering $80 billion in debt. And those bondholders may already be worried about Skydance’s prospects. Skydance didn’t respond to my request for comment.
Kreiz will be paid well for his troubles. His first-year pay package will total $47.5 million.
