Last week, Paramount and Skydance officially announced a deal to merge. Skydance will buy the Redstone family’s majority control of Paramount. Part of the deal gave the Redstone family 45 days to look for other buyers to beat the Skydance offer.
One of the other potential buyers was Sony, which had looked at Paramount but decided not to follow through on the purchase of Paramount, including its streaming services Pluto TV and Paramount+. This comes from a report by Deadline, which says their sources confirmed Sony dropped out of the running. Sony had reportedly made a preliminary $26 billion offer, but Paramount decided to go with Skydance. Sony declined to make a new offer.
Paramount reportedly wanted to get the Paramount studio to make more movies and TV shows. Its partner, Apollo, wanted to get its hands on the land the Paramount studio is located on. Both sides had no interest in the other assets owned by Paramount and planned to sell CBS, Pluto TV, MTV, and Paramount+ to just name a few.
According to the Deadline report, Sony’s plans to sell off most of the Paramount assets resulted in the Redstone family declining to accept the offer.
For now, Sony still has time to look for new offers that can beat the Skydance offer.