Paramount, Skydance Merger Talks End

Star Trek TV's best chance of continuing has ended as the merger talks between Paramount and Skydance ended without a deal. The deal ended essentially because of concerns over shareholder lawsuits and payout not being big enough.

Without getting into the weeds, despite only owning around 10% of Paramount stock, heiress Shari Redstone's National Amusements owns something like 77% of controlling stock in the company making her effectively the sole owner of Paramount which is why she has been able to force a sell of the company and ultimately decide who will get control of the company.

A Sony/Apollo potentially buyout remains on the table but at a value far less than the initial $26 billion bid as the Paramount books and current stock value doesn't make it worth that much to purchase. This scenario would definitely end Star Trek for the foreseeable future. By US law, a foreign company cannot own CBS so it would have to be sold as part of the purchase. While selling that, might as well sell all the other networks. Paramount+ would probably just be shut down in favor of licensing out content or merging it with Playstation Plus whose budget for new content is effectively $0. As for storied Paramount Studios, just look at what happened after the studio 21st Century Fox was sold to Disney which was to merge their library into Disney+ and shuttered everything related to the studio. Star Trek is too valuable to sell but simultaneously too expensive to produce new content for so they would just let it glide along on existing content.

Other potentials buyers have entered the ring. Producer Steven Paul (Baby Geniuses franchise) has put together a group of investors to just buy the National Amusement stake in the company therefore shifting control from Redstone to those investors. It would also eliminate concerns of investor lawsuits. Amount being offered is unknown.

Another potential buyer of National Amusements is Edgar Bronfman Jr, who once ran Universal Studios. However he is being backed by Bain Capital. If Bain has decision making control of the company, their history is to destroy companies, mining them for parts while burying them in debt. So yeah, not exactly a good sign for Star Trek's future. Amount being offer is also unknown.

Basically to sum up, Paramount remains for sell, the best suitor was rejected and what remains are big question marks for both the future of the company and for Star Trek.