Paramount executives readily admitted that its film business is not in good shape and even shared it is unlikely to perform well this upcoming year. However, they have plans to fix this.
First, the company’s Chief Financial Officer Dennis K. Cinelli admitted in the company’s Q4 2025 Earnings call, “The studios, we do expect theatrical revenue to decline. I think we’ve been very clear overall that we are in a rebuild phase of that business. As we execute that rebuild we’ll see some of that come through in the ‘26 slate, but mostly that will come through in future years.”
“Even with theatrical revenue dropping down we do expect better cost management as well as benefits from our licensing deals to drive studio profitability up,” he added. “We’re owner operators. We’re investing for the long-term value creation and you can expect that to show through over the next many years.”
Later in the Q&A portion of the call, CEO David Ellison said the current slate they inherited has “underperformed,” but he expects them “to see insignificant improvement of the profitability of the film slate this year.”
As far as the company’s rebuild phase, he shared that it will focus on franchises, “I think if you really look at how we are doubling down on our franchises and really reinvigorating in them and reinvesting in them, which is something that we did in partnership when I ran Skydance.”
Next, he shared specifics about what he and his team have already done, “We’re going to release 16 movies this year versus the 8 films that we inherited. And we’re going to really be in a steady state of 15 movies per year. We’ve greenlit 11 movies basically since we’ve been here in the first six months including films like A Quiet Place and Sonic, which is really us doubling down on our franchises.”
“Taylor Sheridan [and] Pete Berg are really hard at work on Call of Duty, which we’re really excited about,” Ellison continued. “We have Scream opening this weekend.”
A little bit later, he also shared that the company has two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films in development as well as series and consumer product lines.
With all that said, Ellison made clear he does not expect to make real headway with the studio films until 2027. He explained, “When you really think about really getting our core franchises back online you don’t really see that start to occur until ‘27 just because of what the life cycle is of making a tentpole. It’s two years to basically from beginning to release, at the earliest.”
“We’re making significant improvements in profitability across our film slate and then in ‘27 when you start seeing films like A Quiet Place, and Sonic, Call of Duty, several of our other franchises that basically we’ll be releasing [in] ‘27, ‘28, and beyond, you will see our box office numbers increase. You will see profitability increase, but there is a two-year life cycle minimum to those big event films.”
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