On Aug. 7, 2025, when David Ellison closed the $8.4 billion merger of Paramount Global with his company, Skydance Media, a new chapter in Hollywood began, and another ended: The tumultuous saga of the Redstone family, a dynasty that has been in the business of American entertainment and media for the better part of a century.
Former Paramount global chair and controlling shareholder Shari Redstone sold a company whose roots could be traced to her grandfather, Michael “Mickey” Redstone, and the chain of drive-in movie theaters he founded in 1936 in Dedham, Mass. But it was her father, Sumner Redstone, whose business acumen and relentless competitive drive transformed the family business into an empire with holdings across the worlds of film, TV, cable, video, and publishing.
Shari did not always have an easy relationship with her father, who died at the age of 97 in 2020. As Peter Elkind and Marty Jones reported in a 2016 Fortune feature, the last years of his life were marred by ugly legal battles over his mental acuity and control of what was then a $42 billion media empire known as Viacom and CBS. (At its peak, it was worth an estimated $80 billion.) But father and daughter had reconciled by that point, and they had joined forces to eject Sumner’s “longtime protégé,” then-Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman.
“The brawling conjures the image of a wrestling match inside the booth that controls the Wizard of Oz,” Elkind and Jones wrote. “One of the combatants grabs the lever for a period, and the Great Oz spits out fiery pronouncements in that person’s favor. Shari Redstone has now taken the handle—and this time Dauman may not be able to get it back.”
The feature is a rollicking read, including juicy details of Sumner Redstone’s legal disputes with two former girlfriends-turned-carers, a telling anecdote about Dauman’s ill-advised snubbing of Beyoncé, and a whole lot of insight on an industry in flux and crisis.
Ultimately, the writers concluded, it may be that Sumner’s “legacy will consist not so much of assembling a storied media empire—but of spawning a colossal corporate conflict.”
And certainly, the oustings, schisms, and other kinds of conflicts have continued—through the 19 months of fractious negotiations it took for the Ellisons and Shari Redstone to close their deal, and even after the closing. Recently, a longtime Paramount investor filed a class action lawsuit alleging that the merger enriched Redstone at the expense of other shareholders. More lawsuits are expected.
As Elkind and Jones wrote in 2016: “Living in peace is not the Redstone way.”
