Shari Redstone changed her mind, again!
The media heiress reached a tentative agreement to sell her controlling stake in Paramount Global to Skydance Media — just weeks after she walked away from a deal between the two sides, according to multiple reports on Tuesday.
Redstone, which controls the entertainment giant through its 77% stake in family firm National Amusements, informed a special committee of Paramount Global’s board that it had reached a deal, two sources told Reuters.
The special committee is now weighing whether to combine Paramount, home of the same studio, CBS and Nickelodeon, with Skydance — run by tech heir David Ellison, son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.
Skydance will pay $1.75 billion to National Amusements as part of the deal, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reported the news earlier Tuesday.
The independent studio – which has produced films such as Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One and Top Gun: Maverick for Paramount – and National Amusements have also agreed to a 45-day “sale period” in which other interested Paramount bidders may make offers for the company, the Journal reported.
Paramount, National Amusements and Skydance declined to comment.
Paramount owns the same movie studio, CBS, MTV and Nickelodeon as well as its own streaming service. The company has struggled with a declining cable business, a heavy debt load and a costly build-out of its broadcast business.
Paramount shares rose 9% in after-hours trading on the Skydance news.
The deal comes after Redstone abruptly ended talks with David Ellison in June, killing a potential sale of a controlling stake in Paramount Global to the independent studio.
Under the terms of that deal, Skydance would have acquired National Amusements for about $1.7 billion in cash and provided $4.5 billion to acquire a certain number of non-voting shares of Paramount and non-voting shares of Redstone, it reported Journal.
Skydance would also have injected $1.5 billion into Paramount’s balance sheet, which it could use to pay down its $14 billion debt load.
The stunning turnaround comes a day after billionaire media mogul Barry Diller waded into the Paramount saga by announcing he was exploring a bid to buy Redstone’s NAI stake, The New York Times reported.
It also comes ahead of next week’s Sun Valley conference in Idaho, which draws many media titans.
Diller scoffed at the idea that he needed financial partners to buy Redstone’s stock.
“Absurd, IAC has over $4 billion in cash and liquidity,” he told The Post on Tuesday.
National Amusements owns theaters in the United States, Britain and Latin America and holds 77% of the Redstone family’s Paramount Class A voting stock.
NAI had also received interest from two other plaintiffs, an investor consortium led by Hollywood producer Steven Paul and media executive Edgar Bronfman Jr., which is backed by private equity firm Bain Capital.
Sony Pictures and private equity firm Apollo Global Management had also expressed interest in buying Paramount for $26 billion.