When Skydance confirmed the company’s executive leadership team Monday, most industry reaction centered on elevated roles for content execs such as Casey Bloys, Channing Dungey and George Cheeks.
But another exec in a key new post is JB Perrette, a veteran of streaming since its earliest days and a close associate of Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav. He not only is making the leap to the new company from a top position at WBD — something of a surprise given that execs at the company being acquired generally head for the exits — but his turf also is expanding in some intriguing ways.
Skydance is due to close the deal Tuesday morning, and Perrette will join Co-CEOs David Ellison, Ynon Kreiz and others at a press conference later that afternoon on the Paramount lot.
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Upon the close of the $110 billion deal, Perrette will be Co-Chair & Chief Business Officer, Skydance DTC and Co-Chair & Chief Business Officer, Skydance TV. He will have direct global oversight of distribution, advertising sales, content sales, DTC strategy, marketing and business operations.
Perrette is poised to benefit handsomely from the merger. An SEC filing in March said he would receive $142 million in various deal-related proceeds, though some portion of that could be deferred given his post in the new company. One source cited the massive payday as a potential motivating factor. “He certainly didn’t need the money,” the person said. “He obviously felt compelled by the opportunity.”
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At WBD, Perrette was head of global streaming and gaming, leading the global rollout of HBO Max across more than 130 global markets including the UK, Germany and Italy after the end of a longtime output deal with Sky. The WBD streaming business, which includes some niche services along with mothership HBO Max, also turned profitable on Perrette’s watch. One less-desirable line on the resume is presiding with Zaslav over the inauspicious rebrand of HBO Max to Max in 2023. (After confusion and a degree of backlash among viewers, suppliers and advertisers, it reverted to its original name in 2025.)
While any exec who is in a high position long enough will have missteps, many industry and company sources Deadline spoke with described Perrette as a solid operational executive. Bloys may be the rainmaker with HBO and HBO Max content, but Perrette oversaw product design, global distribution deals and a host of other aspects of the streamer’s growth. Plus, he comes with a pedigree.
At Discovery, Perrette was head of digital and helped launch Eurosport’s streaming service as well as Discovery+, but his 11-year run at NBCUniversal yielded an industry milestone. Overlapping with Zaslav during their time at NBCU, Perrette rose to president of digital and affiliate distribution. He helped usher in the streaming era as one of the key execs behind Hulu’s launch in 2007 as a joint venture with Fox, later serving for several years on the streamer’s board.
Company insiders describe a series of conversations between Perrette and Ellison over the past several weeks, a period when he gradually gained the confidence of the new Skydance boss and his co-CEO, Ynon Kreiz. “He is often the one asking the best questions in the room and has the most comprehensive view,” one former colleague said. Another person from the Paramount orbit said the execs had a “mind-meld” encompassing the future capabilities of streaming services in the AI age.
Perrette also has experience with the blocking and tackling of things like password sharing and other lucrative but detail-oriented operational tasks. Paramount board member and major Skydance investor Gerry Cardinale last week noted that efforts to merge the back ends and tech stacks of Paramount+, Pluto and BET+ have borne fruit. “We’ve already done a hell of a job,” he said. “Then we are going to do the same thing when we bring the HBO universe into this.”
A high-level streaming executive at another company noted that the move could save hundreds of millions of dollars in expenses at a time when Skydance will be eager to deliver on its promise of saving at least $6 billion in costs. “JB is good casting for that kind of thing because he’s willing to get into the weeds on it,” the person said.
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While the fundamentals of streaming technology are familiar to Perrette, advertising and distribution might be a bit less so. “There was a lot of confusion when that popped up in the release because it doesn’t seem like he has a very extensive background in that,” one insider noted of the official announcement. As the former Paramount and WBD come together, there are some unanswered questions about the hierarchy of ad sales in particular, with both companies recently having gone through leadership changes. More details about the second level of top execs will be revealed in the coming days.
On second thought, noted one source, “what we took for granted all those years at the upfronts is up for grabs. Ellison is trying to turn it into a tech company. What will advertising even look like in that kind of environment?”
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