Donna Langley on Industry Mergers, Taylor Sheridan’s Move to Universal, and NBCUniversal’s Independent Future

Donna Langley, chairman of NBCUniversal Entertainment & Studios, has expressed strong skepticism regarding the proposed merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery. “I think it is bad. I think it’s bad for everything,” she stated bluntly, particularly addressing the impact on the feature film market.

“What this year has proven is that if you build it, they will come. If you have the right mix of films in a steady diet for the audience, they’re going to show up. We are also cultivating a great habit with young people, bringing them to the cinema and needing to keep them there. Volume matters, and if we essentially lose a studio—which I know is not the stated plan or goal, but if we lose a studio, it is bad. Looking back at Fox-Disney, it wasn’t great,” she remarked during a Q&A session at the Bloomberg Screentime conference.

Paramount has agreed to a legal settlement requiring the combined studios to release 30 theatrical films annually for the first two years post-merger, and 32 films for the subsequent three years. The deal is expected to close next Tuesday.

Last fall, Universal lured the prolific Taylor Sheridan away from his longtime home at Paramount, securing a new five-year film and television deal starting in early 2029. Asked how this transpired, Langley explained, “Look, I think I saw an opportunity amidst the disruption and instability that arises when companies are undergoing major transitions. These are moments to look around the marketplace and see if there is a competitive advantage. But really, where I started talking to Taylor was about film, because I knew he had a film deal at Paramount, but it was a first-look deal that didn’t have as much teeth as his television deal. That’s how it started, and then we just got to talking, and one thing led to another.”

Split Looming

NBCU itself is navigating major corporate restructuring as parent Comcast plans to spin it off alongside Sky into a standalone, publicly traded company. “I’m mostly excited and optimistic about it. I’m not fearful of it at all, actually. I think it’s going to be good. Not being tethered to a legacy business like Comcast, whose stock has struggled for a while, is a positive thing.

“Now we are going to be the masters of our own destiny. It is more pressure. But in our neck of the woods, when you have to open movies, you know, however many times a year, there’s no more pressure than that.” She acknowledged “the scale question, of course,” but said it will be interesting for the slimmed-down company to explore “at a moment of this real historical transformational change, what else can we be doing, and where else should we be playing in terms of growth.”

The separation is expected to be completed by mid-2027.

Box Office Run

The head of the number one movie studio in the world this year, which achieved the best overall box office since the pandemic, is more cautious about the coming year. “I think 2027 has a different complexion to it. I don’t think it has as much potential for the kind of big billion-dollar hits like this year, if you think about the breakouts, the ones that were surprises. But I think ’28 will be kind of back again.”

“But you know, you really never know. I mean, I think if this year taught us anything, it was so exciting because it sort of reminds you that one of the fun things about this business is that surprises can always happen, good or bad. Luckily, it was good.”

Universal’s Christopher Nolan’s epic The Odyssey is a juggernaut, while Obsession from Focus Features proved to be one of the year’s unexpected hits.

“They were both surprises for different reasons. I felt very confident that The Odyssey was going to cross a billion and then some. But the play-out pattern was so extraordinary. I mean, the fact that in week three we actually outgrossed the second week. It was just filled with surprises all the way along.”

Obsession “was just a good old-fashioned over-performing surprise. We knew we had something that could hit the cultural zeitgeist when we apparently, according to reports, overpaid for it in Toronto … We caught lightning in a bottle.”

The studio acquired the film for $15 million, and it went on to gross over $500 million worldwide.

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