This is In Conversation from Apple News. I'm Shemitabasu. Today, how one of the world valuable movies and TV shows ever made are at the center of an ownership battle.

Two companies, Paramount Skydance and Netflix, are fighting for control of Warner Brothers Discovery,

the studio that owns HBO, CNN, and a trove of classic films.

It's just the latest sign that consolidations are reshaping Hollywood,

changing what we watch, how we watch it, and how much we pay.

They obviously, at a basic level, stand to gain one of the most iconic companies in Hollywood history.

That's Reeves Wyateman, a features writer for New York Magazine.

He recently profiled David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount Skydance, and one of the key players

in this fight for a huge piece of the media landscape.

David is also the son of Larry Ellison, co-founder and longtime CEO of the tech company

Oracle and one of the richest

people in the world.

There is no way to separate David Ellison's rise in Hollywood from his father and the impact

his father has had on his career, funding his efforts in Hollywood basically throughout the

past 20 years from Skydance, the company he ran, and more recently,

to buying Paramount and now trying to buy Warner Brothers.

Reeves didn't speak directly with David or Larry for this piece, but he did talk to people

who know them and who say, despite having a mixed track record, David's passion for the industry

is genuine. He loves movies. He loves

the movie business. He wants it to be successful. He wants to build a sustainable company that

becomes a real player in Hollywood after years of kind of decline. So I sat down with Reeves to

understand who the Ellisons really are, what they want,

...