In the M&A version of a dynastic pact, control of the iconic Hollywood conglomerate Paramount Global will pass from one corporate heir to another. Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, who inherited the reins from her father, agreed to merge it with Skydance Media, led by David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison.

In the first phase of a multistep merger, Skydance will pay Redstone $2.4 billion to gain control of the company. The deal comes after a negotiations saga that included Redstone calling off a similar agreement several weeks ago and Paramount’s CEO resigning in April.

Ailing giant rescue

Ellison, a 41-year-old college dropout-turned-actor-turned-movie producer, will become Paramount’s new CEO. He’ll be tasked with restoring the beleaguered heavyweight to its former glory.

• Paramount owns CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, and the movie studio behind classics like The Godfather and Titanic. Ellison’s Skydance previously teamed up with Paramount to release hits like Top Gun: Maverick and Star Trek Into Darkness.
• Despite its storied past, Paramount has struggled to adapt to a post-linear-TV world. It’s bleeding cash and hasn’t yet been able to offset losses with its streaming service, Paramount+.

Skydance and its financial backers (which include Ellison’s father and RedBird Capital Partners) will provide Paramount with $1.5 billion in cash to help pay off debt and spend $4.5 billion to buy back shares from investors.

The new leadership plans to use its tech know-how to speed up Paramount’s pivot to digital and get viewers to spend more time on Paramount+. It intends to harness generative AI for efficiency gains and to slash costs by $2 billion, while Paramount’s existing bosses said they’ll press ahead with previously planned layoffs.

Looking ahead…the deal is set to close in Q3 of next year, barring any regulatory snags or rival bidders, who have 45 days to submit offers.—SK

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Beryl knocked out power as it raged through Texas. Hurricane Beryl slammed into Texas as a Category 1 storm yesterday, killing at least two people there, leaving more than 2 million homes and businesses without power (most of them in the Houston area), and causing the cancellation of over 1,400 flights. It also disrupted oil production, causing crude prices to fall. The storm, which grew into a Category 5 hurricane unprecedentedly early in the Atlantic season (it later weakened), may be a sign of what’s to come as warming ocean water churns up faster storms.

Biden tells Dems he’s not bowing out. As questions continued to swirl about Joe Biden’s 2024 candidacy in the wake of his poor showing in a debate against Donald Trump, the president said in a letter to congressional Democrats that he’s “firmly committed” to staying in the presidential race despite some major donors and lawmakers calling for him to step aside. The two-page missive insisted, “The question of how to move forward has been well-aired for over a week now. And it’s time for it to end.” Biden also called into MSNBC’s Morning Joe and reiterated his plan to keep running. Polls show his party’s voters are split on whether he should stay or go, and House Democrats are expected to address the issue privately at a meeting today.

Boeing said to be in talks with Defense Department over guilty plea’s impact. After agreeing to plead guilty to a criminal charge tied to Max 737 crashes, Boeing has begun talks with the DOD to preserve its ability to secure hefty government contracts, Reuters reports. It’s a big deal for Boeing: Contracts with the US government accounted for 37% of the company’s revenue last year. Under its plea deal with the Department of Justice, which allows it to avoid a trial, Boeing will admit to fraud in connection with crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia and pay a $243.6 million fine. But a judge could reject the deal, and the families of some crash victims are already objecting.

Almost three years after cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was fatally shot while filming the Western film Rust, a jury will be selected today to decide whether the actor who held the gun is guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

Here’s what Alec Baldwin’s trial in New Mexico will likely focus on:

• The actor says he aimed the revolver at Hutchins per her direction but that it went off without him pulling the trigger. Prosecutors say FBI testing found the .45-caliber weapon couldn’t have fired without a trigger pull.
• The prosecution plans to show on-set footage of Baldwin pointing the revolver at things and keeping his finger on the trigger when it wasn’t supposed to be.
• Baldwin and witnesses say they were told the gun was “cold.” Baldwin’s team argues he had no reason to believe that firing the gun carried risk, so he couldn’t have committed involuntary manslaughter.

The prosecution already hit a snag. The state can’t argue that Baldwin’s role as Rust co-producer made him more culpable in safety violations, the judge ruled pretrial yesterday. Prosecutors also won’t be allowed to show footage of Baldwin allegedly trying to hurry up the armorer who loaded the gun: Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, who’s already been convicted of involuntary manslaughter (she’s appealing).

If convicted…Baldwin faces up to 18 months in prison. Prosecutors withdrew a plea deal offer in October after hearing that Baldwin had pressured potential witnesses to cooperate with a filmmaker making a sympathetic documentary about the incident.—ML

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Locals in Barcelona broke out their squirt guns over the weekend—but not because they wanted to cool down. Thousands of protesters sprayed water at tourists in a popular city district on Saturday as part of a demonstration against mass tourism. The protesters, led by the Neighborhood Assembly for Tourism Degrowth, said it and sprayed it, chanting “tourists, go home” as they wet people eating outside at restaurants.

Why? Barcelona has struggled with the impact of tourism on the local economy, especially the rising cost of living. Rent has increased 68% over the past ten years. Meanwhile, home sales prices have climbed by 38%.

In response, the city’s mayor announced a plan to end short-term apartment rental licenses for some 10,000 apartments by 2028 to free up housing on offer at Airbnb and other tourist-focused platforms.

Elsewhere in Spain…anti-tourism protests have sprung up in Palma de Mallorca and Málaga, both popular beach destinations. Each saw 10,000+ protesters at demonstrations earlier this year.

Other places are taking a different approach: Copenhagen’s new initiative, CopenPay, offers free activity passes and/or meals to tourists who partake in pro-sustainability activities, like using the train or cleaning up trash—everyone’s favorite vacation pastime.—CC

Panting your way up the stairs this summer? It’s because the US, where the passenger elevator was invented, only has roughly 1 million of the people-carriers in operation. That puts it on par with Spain—a country which has one-seventh of America’s population and less than half as many apartments, according to a recent guest essay in the New York Times. And Switzerland has twice as many as NYC, despite having just about the same number of inhabitants and 3x as many single-family homes.

Stephen Smith, who heads a nonprofit that advocates for updating America’s building codes, said in the essay that cost is a major factor in the US not keeping pace with European elevator installation. A four-stop elevator costs ~$158,000 in New York City but just ~$36,000 in Switzerland. Why? Like meal portion sizes, elevators are bigger in the US, in part due to regulations, and the high cost of labor also contributes to the price tag, per Smith.