David Ellison's Skydance Media raises $400 million - Yahoo Finance

By Dawn Chmielewski

(Reuters) - Skydance Media, the workplace down specified films and tv bid arsenic "The Adam Project" and "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan", connected Thursday announced it has completed a $400 cardinal concern circular led by the planetary concern steadfast KKR & Co and the Ellison family.

The autarkic studio, founded successful 2010 by David Ellison, lad of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, has been gathering momentum successful Hollywood, arsenic a fiscal backer and shaper of Paramount Pictures' summertime blockbuster, "Top Gun: Maverick," and shaper of specified long-running streaming bid arsenic Amazon.com Inc's "Reacher" and Netflix Inc's "Grace and Frankie."

Skydance has expanded its amusement portfolio successful caller years. It released its archetypal animated film, "Luck," this summer, from an in-house workplace led by Pixar Animation Studios co-founder John Lasseter, and showed disconnected a teaser for a caller crippled called "Behemoth" astatine an lawsuit this week wherever Meta Platforms Inc unveiled its virtual world headset, the Quest Pro.

The workplace besides hired Mandalay Sports Media enforcement Jon Weinbach, who produced the 2020 sports documentary "The Last Dance," astir Michael Jordan's last play with the Chicago Bulls, to caput its sports division.

"All the superior is being utilized to money our aboriginal maturation and our emerging businesses," Ellison told Reuters.

KKR is viewed arsenic a strategical investor, having taken stakes successful specified media and sports businesses arsenic German steadfast Axel Springer SE, TikTok genitor ByteDance Ltd, Fortnite creator Epic Games and the sports wagering institution FanDuel Inc.

The backing circular besides includes backing from existing investors RedBird Capital Partners and Tencent Holdings Limited and values Skydance astatine implicit $4 billion.

(Reporting by Dawn Chmielewski)