David Ellison has named Mattel chairman and chief executive Ynon Kreiz as co-CEO of Paramount Skydance, putting him in charge of day to day operations and the integration of the company's 111 billion dollar acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal expected to close October 6. Kreiz joins Paramount on October 5 while continuing to lead Mattel, with Ellison remaining chairman and CEO focused on strategy, creative direction and technology for the combined company.
From a Tel Aviv household to Hollywood
Kreiz grew up middle class in Israel, the son of an engineer and a psychologist, and completed mandatory military service before earning an economics degree from Tel Aviv University and an MBA from UCLA Anderson in 1993, where he met media mogul Haim Saban. He went on to co-found Fox Kids Europe, which sold to Disney in 2002, later led the reality television producer Endemol, and in 2012 took over a struggling Maker Studios, selling it to Disney for 500 million dollars in 2016. He joined Mattel's board that same year and became its CEO in 2018.
The bet that mocked his own company
At Mattel, Kreiz pushed the company well beyond toy manufacturing and toward entertainment and intellectual property. His defining gamble was greenlighting Greta Gerwig's Barbie movie even though early drafts of the script portrayed Mattel itself unflatteringly. The 2023 film went on to become Warner Bros.' highest grossing release ever, and Barbie doll sales rose 16 percent in the third quarter that year.
The scale of the new job
The merger Kreiz is now helping integrate brings together more than 200 years of combined studio history between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. The resulting company is expected to reach more than 200 million streaming subscribers worldwide, with the deal projected to generate over 6 billion dollars in run rate synergies, after a federal judge gave final approval to the transaction.
Advice for the next generation
During a commencement address at Wharton, Kreiz described hiring a barista, an Iranian refugee with a computer science degree but little formal work history, who went on to become one of Mattel's top performers on its global technology team. His advice to the graduates was simple: look up and make eye contact, prioritizing human connection over digital interaction in a world that increasingly defaults to the opposite.
If you're looking for precedents, you will not be the one setting them.
That line, from Kreiz himself, captures the instinct Ellison is now betting on at a much larger scale, the same willingness to back an unconventional choice, whether a film that risked embarrassing his own company or a hire whose resume did not fit the usual mold, as Kreiz steps into one of the biggest integration jobs in modern entertainment history.
