Hollywood Stayed. Now Comes the Hard Part: Welcome to the $110 Billion Skydance Experiment

Paramount threatened to leave California. California sued. Everybody threatened everybody. Now Paramount and Warner Bros. are getting married anyway—and somehow the CEO of Mattel is helping run the household.

Well.

That escalated quickly.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about what appeared to be the beginning of the strangest Hollywood relocation since The Beverly Hillbillies loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly.

Paramount was threatening to leave California.

California was suing Paramount.

Paramount was trying to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.

Politicians were panicking.

Lawyers were billing.

And beginning October 1, a delay in the deal was going to start increasing the price Paramount owed Warner shareholders.

I called the whole thing:

HOW TO LOSE AN INDUSTRY IN 10 DAYS.

Turns out Hollywood didn’t lose the industry.

It just consolidated most of it into one gigantic corporate structure and handed somebody an $80 billion credit-card bill.

So…

Good news?

PREVIOUSLY ON: HOLLYWOOD

For anyone who missed our last episode, here’s what happened.

Paramount Skydance wanted Warner Bros. Discovery.

Badly.

California and 11 other states sued to stop the merger, arguing that putting this much entertainment under one corporate roof could hurt competition, workers and consumers.

Paramount responded with the corporate equivalent of:

“Fine. Maybe we’ll just move.”

Texas was mentioned.

Tennessee was mentioned.

Georgia was mentioned.

And somewhere in Burbank, a studio executive presumably opened Zillow and typed:

NASHVILLE HOMES WITH SCREENING ROOM.

Then everybody sat down.

And made a deal.

On September 30, a federal judge approved the settlement, clearing the path for Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.

The merger is expected to close October 6.

Price tag?

Roughly:

$110 BILLION.

For perspective, that is enough money to buy approximately 733 million large movie-theater popcorns.

Or six parking spaces in Beverly Hills.

SO WHAT DID CALIFORNIA GET?

Quite a bit, actually.

The settlement requires the combined company to release at least 30 theatrical movies annually during its first two years, followed by 32 per year during the next three.

It also requires at least $300 million in additional domestic film-production spending annually compared with 2025 levels.

That’s $1.5 billion over five years.

And if the company misses its annual movie quota?

There’s a potential $30 million penalty per missing film.

Which is fantastic.

Hollywood has finally invented something I’ve wanted for years:

A FINE FOR NOT MAKING ENOUGH MOVIES.

Think of the possibilities.

Can we expand this?

Movie is 45 minutes too long?

$8 million.

Movie ends with “PART ONE” even though nobody told us there was going to be a Part Two?

$12 million.

Character says, “So THAT happened”?

Studio loses a parking structure.

We could fix Hollywood by Thursday.

The agreement also requires the physical Paramount and Warner Bros. studio lots to remain in operation and includes workforce investments, labor protections and other conditions.

So that dramatic threat about Paramount packing up the mountain and moving to Tennessee?

For the foreseeable future:

The mountain stays.

BUT HERE’S WHERE THE STORY GETS REALLY INTERESTING

Because after all this fighting about Paramount and Warner Bros…

The company above them apparently isn’t going to be called Paramount.

Or Warner Bros.

It’s going to be called:

SKYDANCE.

David Ellison announced October 2 that the combined parent company will adopt the name of the production company he founded nearly two decades ago.

Paramount remains Paramount.

Warner Bros. remains Warner Bros.

But upstairs?

Skydance.

Imagine buying McDonald’s and Burger King and announcing that the parent company will henceforth be named:

DAVE’S BURGER SHED.

That’s confidence.

And I respect it.

AND THEN THEY HIRED THE BARBIE GUY

This is my favorite development.

Because apparently owning Paramount, Warner Bros., CBS, CNN, HBO Max, Paramount+, DC, Harry Potter, Mission: Impossible and everything else wasn’t interesting enough.

David Ellison needed a partner.

So he recruited:

Ynon Kreiz.

The outgoing CEO of Mattel.

Yes.

The company that makes Barbie.

And Hot Wheels.

And UNO.

And Fisher-Price.

And Masters of the Universe.

Kreiz helped transform Mattel from simply being a toy manufacturer into a company aggressively developing its intellectual property across movies, television, games and other entertainment.

Most notably?

Barbie.

You may remember it.

Pink.

Margot Robbie.

Made slightly more money than the average student film.

Kreiz will become co-CEO of the combined company, handling day-to-day operations and integration, while Ellison focuses on strategy, creative direction and technology.

Which means one of the largest collections of entertainment intellectual property ever assembled will partly be managed by the man who spent the last several years asking:

“Okay, what else in the toy aisle can become a movie?”

I literally just wrote a column about Matchbox: The Movie.

This is getting personal.

WELCOME TO THE BIGGEST FRANCHISE CLOSET IN HOLLYWOOD

Consider what is effectively gathering under this enormous umbrella.

Paramount.

Warner Bros.

CBS.

CNN.

HBO Max.

Paramount+.

DC.

Harry Potter.

Mission: Impossible.

Star Trek.

Yellowstone.

Game of Thrones.

Looney Tunes.

Food Network.

Comedy Central.

MTV.

Nickelodeon.

TBS.

And a tremendous amount more.

This isn’t a media company.

This is what happens when somebody clicks:

SELECT ALL.

The theoretical possibilities are staggering.

Batman on Survivor.

Harry Potter investigates crimes on NCIS.

Guy Fieri visits the Shire.

Diners, Drive-Ins and Dungeons.

I would watch that immediately.

AND NOW FOR THE PART THAT MAKES MY PAPER BAG TINGLE

Readers of my book Crash of the Titans know why giant corporate entertainment bets fascinate me.

The book looks back at famous Hollywood disasters—the movies where studios had enormous resources, recognizable intellectual property, experienced executives and every possible reason to believe they couldn’t fail.

And then…

Battleship.

There is a lesson buried underneath almost every legendary Hollywood flop.

The disasters rarely look ridiculous when somebody approves them.

That’s the important part.

Nobody walks into a boardroom and says:

“Gentlemen, I’ve developed a catastrophic idea that will embarrass us publicly and vaporize several hundred million dollars.”

No.

They say:

SYNERGY.

They say:

SCALE.

They say:

GLOBAL IP.

They say:

EFFICIENCIES.

They say:

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT.

And eventually somebody puts an arrow on a PowerPoint slide.

Once the arrows appear, it’s over.

THE $80 BILLION ELEPHANT IN THE SCREENING ROOM

Here’s why I’m fascinated by this deal.

The new Skydance enters its next chapter carrying roughly:

$80 BILLION IN DEBT.

At the same time, management is targeting approximately:

$6 BILLION IN COST SAVINGS.

Those are not typos.

Six.

Billion.

Dollars.

In savings.

Now, executives have indicated those savings won’t come entirely from layoffs. Combining technology systems and eliminating duplicate corporate functions can obviously save enormous amounts of money.

That’s the rational explanation.

But I’m the Unknown Critic.

I’m contractually obligated to imagine the less rational version.

EXECUTIVE: We need to save six billion dollars.

ACCOUNTANT: I’ve canceled HBO Max.

EXECUTIVE: That’s one streaming service.

ACCOUNTANT: Fine. Paramount+ too.

EXECUTIVE: We own both.

ACCOUNTANT: Exactly. Synergy.

And this is where the story stops being merely funny.

Because whenever you hear phrases like “operational efficiencies,” thousands of employees hear something different.

They hear:

“Should I update LinkedIn?”

THIS IS THE PART HOLLYWOOD NEVER PUTS IN THE TRAILER

The studios remain.

That’s important.

Production commitments are part of the settlement.

That’s important too.

California has also dramatically expanded its film and television tax-credit program, and state officials say its first year generated commitments representing billions in production spending and tens of thousands of cast-and-crew jobs.

California is clearly fighting to keep production here.

But mergers this large inevitably create overlapping departments.

Two marketing operations.

Two finance structures.

Two distribution organizations.

Multiple streaming infrastructures.

Layers of management.

Technology systems.

Administrative departments.

And now management has promised investors billions in savings.

You don’t need to be Nostradamus to understand why Hollywood workers are nervous.

The buildings may stay.

The more important question is:

Who gets to keep working inside them?

THE GREAT HOLLYWOOD PARADOX

And that’s why this entire saga fascinates me.

Hollywood spent years worrying that technology companies were going to take over entertainment.

Netflix.

Amazon.

Apple.

Silicon Valley.

Algorithms.

Streaming.

Then one of Hollywood’s answers was apparently:

BECOME EVEN BIGGER THAN HOLLYWOOD.

Scale versus scale.

Franchise versus franchise.

Library versus library.

Platform versus platform.

The theory makes sense.

That’s what worries me.

Because the most interesting disasters in Crash of the Titans weren’t usually obviously stupid ideas.

They were reasonable ideas taken to unreasonable extremes.

Battleship wasn’t insane because somebody wanted an action movie.

It became insane when a familiar board-game title somehow justified building a gigantic effects-driven franchise hopeful around alien naval warfare.

Scale becomes its own argument.

The budget becomes proof of confidence.

The investment becomes evidence that the investment must have been smart.

Until opening weekend.

MAYBE SKYDANCE WORKS

And here’s where I disappoint anyone hoping I’ll simply predict disaster.

I can’t.

Because there is also a compelling argument for this combination.

Ellison has money, ambition and an obvious desire to modernize an old studio system.

Kreiz demonstrated at Mattel that old intellectual property can become culturally relevant again.

Warner Bros. possesses an extraordinary library.

Paramount possesses an extraordinary library.

The combined company gains tremendous scale.

California has created stronger incentives for production.

The settlement creates enforceable theatrical-production commitments.

There are legitimate reasons the strategy could succeed.

Which is precisely why it belongs in the Unknown Critic universe.

The fascinating question isn’t:

“Is this stupid?”

It isn’t.

The fascinating question is:

“What happens when an enormous, rational corporate strategy collides with an entertainment business that has become almost impossible to predict?”

That’s the movie I want to watch.

BECAUSE HOLLYWOOD STILL HAS ONE PROBLEM NOBODY CAN MERGE AWAY

You can merge studios.

You can consolidate streaming services.

You can combine technology platforms.

You can cut overhead.

You can acquire libraries.

You can own Superman, Tom Cruise, Bugs Bunny, SpongeBob, Harry Potter and Tony Soprano.

You can build the greatest entertainment arsenal assembled since someone discovered that Walt Disney owned both Darth Vader and Kermit the Frog.

But eventually…

Somebody still has to make something people want to watch.

That’s it.

That’s the whole business.

The audience does not care about your debt structure.

The audience doesn’t know what EBITDA means.

The audience has never once left a theater saying:

“The third act dragged, but I really admired their operational efficiencies.”

Stories win.

Characters win.

Movies win.

Everything else is accounting.

CRASH OF THE TITANS…PART TWO?

That’s why I’ll be watching Skydance very closely.

Not because I’m rooting for it to fail.

Quite the opposite.

Hollywood desperately needs successful movies.

California needs production.

Movie theaters need films people actually leave the house to see.

Workers need jobs.

And audiences could certainly use fewer corporate strategies masquerading as entertainment.

But history teaches us something.

Titanic companies rarely realize they’re standing near an iceberg.

That’s why they’re titans.

So perhaps the sequel to my previous column isn’t:

HOW TO LOSE AN INDUSTRY IN 10 DAYS.

Maybe it’s:

HOW TO BUILD THE BIGGEST STUDIO IN HOLLYWOOD AND HOPE NOBODY DROPS IT.

Because Paramount isn’t leaving California.

Warner Bros. isn’t leaving Burbank.

The lawsuit is settling.

The merger is moving forward.

Skydance is arriving.

And somewhere in Hollywood right now, I guarantee you…

There is a PowerPoint presentation.

There are arrows.

There is the word:

SYNERGY.

And someone has just said:

“What could possibly go wrong?”

I’ve written an entire book about that sentence.

It’s called Crash of the Titans.

— The Unknown Critic

Why the Santa’s Best Taz Blow Mold Has Become One of the Hottest Finds in Collecting

Every collector has one.

The blow mold you keep hoping will be sitting behind a folding table at an estate sale. The one you search for on Marketplace even though you know perfectly well you searched for it yesterday. The one that makes you slow the car down when you spot a suspiciously familiar plastic silhouette sticking out of somebody’s garage. In my book, The Glow That Won’t Go Out, I highlight collector Brandon’s Indiana Jones-like pursuit of an elusive angel teddy bear blow mold.

Right now, one of those pieces is the Santa’s Best Tasmanian Devil Christmas blow mold.

I recently talked with blow mold collector and dealer Ed (@sickeddie) on Instagram, and when I asked him what collectors are really hunting for these days, his answer caught my attention.

Taz.

According to Ed, the Santa’s Best Tasmanian Devil is one of the most sought-after blow molds right now — and finding a good one is becoming increasingly difficult.

It makes sense.

Because Taz isn’t simply another Christmas blow mold.

He’s a wonderfully strange artifact from the moment when traditional illuminated lawn decorations collided headfirst with 1990s pop culture.

And somehow, it worked.

When Christmas Blow Molds Met the Cartoon Licensing Boom

To understand why a glowing Tasmanian Devil ever ended up standing next to plastic Santas and Nativity sets, you have to go back to the final great era of traditional blow molds.

Santa’s Best arrived in the early 1990s and became one of the recognizable names in holiday décor. Along with companies collectors know well — Empire, General Foam, Union Products and others — Santa’s Best helped keep the molded-plastic Christmas tradition alive as American decorating tastes began changing.

But by the 1990s, there was a problem.

How many different ways could you sell America another Santa?

Manufacturers needed something new.

The answer was sitting inside Saturday morning cartoons, mall stores and seemingly every T-shirt rack in America:

licensed characters.

Warner Bros. characters were everywhere during the 1990s, and few benefited from that explosion more than the Tasmanian Devil.

Taz was perfect for the era.

He was loud. He was ridiculous. He destroyed everything in his path. He looked great on a T-shirt.

His popularity had grown far beyond his original Looney Tunes appearances, aided by television syndication and Taz-Mania, which debuted in 1991.

By the end of the decade, putting Taz on merchandise wasn’t unusual.

Putting him on a giant illuminated plastic Christmas decoration?

That was inspired.

Enter the Santa’s Best Taz Blow Mold

Around 2000, Santa’s Best turned the Tasmanian Devil into something wonderfully absurd: a Christmas lawn decoration.

And not just any lawn decoration.

The large Taz stands roughly 40 inches tall, depending on how he’s measured and positioned, complete with his unmistakable face, Santa-themed styling and removable antlers.

There was also a smaller 18-inch Santa’s Best Taz, giving collectors another version to hunt down.

The large version is the showstopper.

This isn’t Taz politely standing at attention like a choir boy.

It’s Taz.

He looks as if Christmas happened to him rather than the other way around.

That’s part of what makes the piece so appealing today. Traditional blow molds often relied on familiar holiday imagery — Santas, candles, snowmen, angels, reindeer and Nativity figures.

Taz came from another universe entirely.

Put him in a lineup of vintage Christmas blow molds and your eyes immediately go to him.

Why Taz Is So Hard to Find

Here is where the story gets interesting for collectors.

Santa’s Best wasn’t making Taz during the enormous postwar boom in plastic Christmas decorations. He arrived near the end of the classic blow-mold era.

Santa’s Best ceased producing blow molds in 2003.

That means Taz never had decades of continuous production behind him.

Compare that with some classic Santa or snowman designs that were produced in enormous quantities, sometimes through multiple manufacturers and tooling changes.

Taz had a much smaller window.

Then add another problem:

kids loved him.

A traditional plastic candle might get carefully packed away every January. A giant Tasmanian Devil was a character. He was handled. Moved around. Played with. Dragged through garages.

And then there are those antlers.

Collectors searching for a large Taz today frequently encounter examples with missing or damaged accessories. The attachment areas can be vulnerable, and finding one with its original components intact can make a big difference in desirability.

The fact that replacement Taz noses and antlers are manufactured today tells you something about how seriously collectors take restoring these figures.

Nobody starts manufacturing specialty replacement parts for something nobody wants. Are you looking for a blow mold replacement part? If so, blowmolds.com and blowmoldstore.com are reputable places to shop.

The Blow Mold That Captures an Entire Era

There’s another reason I think Taz has become such an interesting collectible.

He represents the moment when two different kinds of nostalgia overlap.

For traditional blow mold collectors, he represents the final years of the classic illuminated plastic yard decoration.

For someone who grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, he represents something completely different.

Looney Tunes shirts.

Warner Bros. stores.

Saturday morning cartoons.

Shopping malls.

Character merchandise.

Christmas catalogs.

Big-box stores stacked with seasonal decorations.

Taz sits right in the middle of all of it.

He’s not quite mid-century Christmas.

He’s not modern Christmas either.

He’s late-20th-century American Christmas preserved in plastic.

And that period is rapidly becoming collectible in its own right.

Then the Inflatable Arrived

Of course, there was another storm brewing on America’s front lawns.

The inflatable.

During the early 2000s, inflatable decorations offered retailers a massive logistical advantage over traditional blow molds.

A four-foot rigid plastic character takes up a lot of shelf space.

Deflate a similarly sized inflatable and you can put it in a box.

That matters when you’re Walmart, Target, Home Depot or any other retailer trying to fit an entire seasonal department into a finite amount of warehouse and shelf space.

The economics changed.

Consumers changed.

And one by one, many of the classic blow molds disappeared.

Santa’s Best ended blow mold production in 2003.

What had seemed like an ordinary mass-market Christmas decoration suddenly had a finite supply.

Twenty-plus years later, collectors are fighting over the survivors.

What Should You Look for When Buying a Taz?

If you stumble across one at an estate sale, flea market or Marketplace pickup, don’t just look at the paint.

Look at the whole piece.

Check the plastic carefully for cracks, particularly around areas where accessories attach. Examine the antlers and nose. Look for repairs. Check whether the original light assembly is present and inspect the cord before attempting to illuminate it.

Paint condition matters, but don’t automatically dismiss a piece with some fading or paint loss.

These were outdoor Christmas decorations.

They lived outside.

Sunlight, freezing temperatures, moisture, garages, attics and twenty-plus Christmas seasons leave evidence.

Personally, I’d rather see an honest survivor with some wear than a heavily altered example masquerading as mint.

And if accessories are missing, restoration may still be possible. An entire cottage industry has developed around keeping vintage blow molds alive, and replacement components are now available for Taz — including noses and reproduction antlers. At blowmoldstore.com you’ll find replacement parts for Taz specifically, among others of course.

That’s another sign that this isn’t merely an old decoration anymore.

It’s a collectible worth saving.

What Is a Santa’s Best Taz Worth?

This is where collectors need to be careful.

Online asking prices are not the same thing as actual market value.

At the time of writing, examples of the smaller Taz can appear in the low hundreds, while sellers sometimes ask considerably more for scarce large examples. Ed showed me an eBay listing for what appears to be a pristine Taz going for almost $900! Condition, size, original accessories, working illumination, paint quality and local availability can all dramatically affect what someone is willing to pay.

The 40-inch Taz is the one I’d be watching especially closely.

A complete example with strong paint, original antlers, nose and working light assembly is a very different collectible from a cracked body missing half its accessories.

So don’t buy based solely on somebody writing RARE!!! in an online listing.

Do your homework.

That’s half the fun anyway.

From Big-Box Novelty to Blow Mold Grail

There is something wonderfully appropriate about Taz becoming a collector favorite.

He wasn’t designed to become an heirloom.

He was seasonal merchandise.

A licensed character molded out of plastic, painted in bright colors, wired with a light bulb and sold to families who wanted something funny on the lawn at Christmas.

Nobody buying one around the turn of the millennium was thinking:

“I should preserve this carefully. Collectors are going to lose their minds over it someday.”

And that’s precisely why pieces like this become collectible.

Most weren’t preserved.

Some cracked.

Some faded.

Some lost their antlers.

Some went into dumpsters when families moved.

Some probably disappeared during Saturday morning garage cleanouts for five bucks apiece.

And a few survived.

Now collectors like Ed are searching for them.

That’s what makes this hobby endlessly fascinating. Sometimes the most interesting piece isn’t the decoration everyone knew would become valuable.

It’s the ridiculous plastic Tasmanian Devil somebody bought for the front yard more than two decades ago.

And somewhere out there, one is probably still sitting in an attic.

Waiting for somebody to figure out what they have.

Want to Learn More About Vintage Blow Molds?

The Glow That Won’t Go Out: The Complete Collector’s Guide to Vintage Holiday Blow Molds explores the manufacturers, history, identification clues, collecting strategies, restoration techniques and stories behind the glowing plastic decorations that once filled American neighborhoods.

From Empire and General Foam to Union Products, Santa’s Best and the pieces collectors are still chasing today, it’s a celebration of a Christmas tradition that nearly disappeared — but never stopped glowing.

The glow isn’t gone. You just have to know where to look.

By Curtiss Wayne Andrews