Something I've mulled about this acquisition is that it appears to be a form of succession planning by Larry Ellison for his kids David (Skydance) and Megan (Annapurna).

Oracle was always an Ellison driven enterprise, but neither David nor Megan had much aptitude or interest in enterprise SaaS, and a newer generation of operators took the reigns at Oracle in the 2010s like Catz, Hurd, Scilia, Magouyrk, and even Kurian before he left for GCP.

Given the ferocity with which this acquisition was fought (much more ferocious that similarly political fraught M&As like Sinclair) and the relatively weak fundamentals, there clearly is an emotional and family succession planning aspect to it.

Ellison has taken similar decisions with an emotional lens previously, such as his support for Steve Jobs retaking control of Apple.

I don't quite follow, how does this acquisition fits in with the family succession planning? It seems the son and daughter each has their own going enterprise and they're not interested in their daddy's business, but now daddy is fighting to acquire WBD for his son's enterprise? How does this affect the daughter? The dynamics are not quite clear to me, could you explain?

Seems more cynical far right media control. You can call that succession planning i suppose.

David is fairly good at Hollywood production. He's got a surprising number of blockbusters under his belt.

It remains to be seen whether his rightward turn is just pandering to Trump to get stuff done or if he's gone of the rails. If its the latter, the Paramount acquisition will likely be regarded as one of the biggest failures of all time.