Will Warner Bros. kill Skydance — or will David Ellison kill Warner Bros?

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Will Warner Bros. kill Skydance — or will David Ellison kill Warner Bros? Maybe the thi— no, fou— wait, fifth time’s the charm for WB. by Nilay Patel.

华纳兄弟会扼杀天空之舞（Skydance），还是大卫·埃里森（David Ellison）会扼杀华纳兄弟？也许这是第三次……不，第四次……等等，第五次尝试对华纳兄弟来说会是转机吗？作者：Nilay Patel。

Today, I’m talking with Peter Kafka, chief correspondent at Business Insider and host of the Channels podcast, about the gigantic Warner Bros.-Paramount merger and the future of the company now simply called Skydance. Skydance is owned by David Ellison, son of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, and its deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery officially closed the day Peter and I spoke.

今天，我与《商业内幕》（Business Insider）首席记者兼《Channels》播客主持人彼得·卡夫卡（Peter Kafka）探讨了华纳兄弟与派拉蒙之间那场巨大的合并，以及这家现在简称为“天空之舞”的公司的未来。天空之舞由甲骨文公司首席执行官拉里·埃里森（Larry Ellison）之子大卫·埃里森拥有，就在我和彼得交谈的当天，其收购华纳兄弟探索公司（Warner Bros. Discovery）的交易正式完成。

There are some grand ambitions here, but the reality is that acquiring Warner never goes well for anyone. AOL failed, AT&T failed, and Discovery failed — although it did succeed in flipping these assets to Skydance. So I wanted to ask Peter if he thinks the Ellisons and Skydance have a real shot at succeeding where so many companies before them have hit the rocks.

这里面有着宏大的抱负，但现实是，收购华纳对任何人来说从来都没有好结果。美国在线（AOL）失败了，美国电话电报公司（AT&T）失败了，探索频道（Discovery）也失败了——尽管它确实成功地将这些资产转手给了天空之舞。因此，我想问问彼得，他是否认为埃里森家族和天空之舞真的有机会在这么多前人折戟沉沙的地方取得成功。

Peter Kafka, you’re the chief correspondent at Business Insider, and you’re the host of the Channels podcast, our sister podcast here on the Vox Media Podcast Network. Welcome back to Decoder. Thanks for having me. It’s big media day again!

彼得·卡夫卡，你是《商业内幕》的首席记者，也是我们 Vox Media 播客网络旗下姐妹播客《Channels》的主持人。欢迎回到《Decoder》。谢谢邀请。这又是一个大型媒体日！

A big media day. It’s an auspicious day, as my parents would say. It is the day that the Warner-Paramount merger closes. We’ve all been calling it Warner Mount, but I’m told this company will instead just be called Skydance. Skydance! Every time I see the word Skydance, I assume it is foreign-owned, which is maybe true in some way.

一个大型媒体日。正如我父母所说，这是一个吉利的日子。这是华纳与派拉蒙合并完成的日子。我们一直称其为“华纳派拉蒙”（Warner Mount），但我被告知这家公司将直接改名为“天空之舞”。天空之舞！每次我看到“天空之舞”这个词，我都会认为它是外资拥有的，这在某种程度上或许是真的。

Another way to think of it is that there are iconic names in Hollywood. Paramount is such an iconic name that Viacom turned itself into Paramount years ago. Warner Bros. is a legendary studio. Let’s get rid of those names. Let’s add Skydance, which no one’s ever heard of.

换个角度想，好莱坞有一些标志性的名字。派拉蒙是一个如此标志性的名字，以至于维亚康姆（Viacom）多年前就将自己改名为派拉蒙。华纳兄弟是一家传奇制片厂。让我们抛弃这些名字，换上一个没人听说过的“天空之舞”。

I think for the near term, you’re still gonna think of companies like Paramount, Warner Bros., and HBO as brands you know, but this is going to be one company. They’re going to merge everything. They’re likely going to merge the streaming services, Paramount and HBO, into a thing, not right away, but eventually. So I do think Skydance will be a name that consumers will probably know at some point.

我认为在短期内，你仍然会认为派拉蒙、华纳兄弟和 HBO 是你熟悉的品牌，但它们终将成为一家公司。他们会合并一切。他们很可能会将派拉蒙和 HBO 的流媒体服务合并成一个平台，虽然不会立即实现，但最终会发生。所以我确实认为，在某个时间点，消费者会认识“天空之舞”这个名字。

There’s no plan for new revenue. There’s no announced plan for new revenue. Right now it’s shrinking; it’s cutting costs. It’s when we merge these two companies together, we’re gonna save $6 billion over the next three years. We promise that most of that’s not gonna come from layoffs, but a lot of it’s gonna come from layoffs.

目前还没有新的收入计划。没有宣布任何新的收入计划。现在公司正在萎缩，正在削减成本。他们说，当我们合并这两家公司时，未来三年将节省 60 亿美元。他们承诺大部分资金不会来自裁员，但实际上很大一部分确实会来自裁员。