Skydance is tightening its operating structure after its merger. In a staff email sent Tuesday evening, Skydance president Andy Gordon set out leadership across the areas outside the film and television divisions: games and experiences, products and publishing, HR and global operations.
One games team across two catalogs
The clearest change is structural. Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery’s games and experiences divisions will now operate as a single team. That brings Paramount Games Studio together with Warner Bros. Games’ internal developers, including Avalanche Software, the studio behind “Hogwarts Legacy,” NetherRealm Studios, Rocksteady Studios, TT Games, and the WB Games teams in Montreal and Boston.
The combined team inherits a franchise list that is unusually broad: “Star Trek,” “Mission: Impossible,” “SpongeBob SquarePants,” “South Park,” “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and “The Godfather” from Paramount; “Harry Potter,” the DC Universe, “Mortal Kombat,” “The Matrix,” “Rick and Morty” and “Game of Thrones” from Warner Bros.
The new leadership bench
- Tony Driscoll becomes president of games and experiences, in addition to leading corporate strategy and development.
- Josh Silverman becomes president of global products and publishing.
- Jim Sterner stays on as chief people officer, continuing to lead HR operations.
- Jose Turkienicz continues as president of global operations, including real estate, procurement and studio operations, with a mandate to simplify processes and speed up the path to market.
- Jeff Silberman becomes Gordon’s chief of staff while remaining executive vice president of corporate strategy.
Driscoll was already leading Paramount’s newly launched video game studio, created in June from Paramount and Skydance’s gaming assets. His new remit now spans the combined Warner side as well.
Why marketers should pay attention
This is not a back-office reshuffle. Gordon framed games, experiences, consumer products and publishing as “core pillars of our strategy to build engagement and fandom in both the physical and digital worlds.” He added: “We want to meet consumers where they watch, play, and engage.”
The practical goal is to make each franchise work harder across more touchpoints. A DC fan could be reached through a game, a park visit, a retail product, an e-commerce drop or a streaming release, with the same division steering the roadmap. The company also signalled plans to deepen DC Comics storytelling and expand e-commerce to connect fans with brands.
What happens next
Driscoll’s early plan is relationship-driven. In his own memo, he said his first priority in the coming weeks is meeting teams “from LA to London, Montreal to Tokyo, and beyond.” That global span matters because it will determine how quickly the merged studios align on production timelines and franchise planning.
For media planners and entertainment marketers, the watchpoint is whether a unified games-and-experiences unit leads to earlier cross-division planning and more synchronised launches. Family properties such as “SpongeBob SquarePants” and superhero IP such as DC are the likeliest test cases for that integration.
Source: Variety
