Skydance Orders Five-Day Office Return and Offers Voluntary Buyouts After Warner Deal

Skydance, the media giant formed when Paramount bought Warner Bros. Discovery, told employees on Monday, Oct. 26, 2026, that everyone across the company will have to work in the office five days a week, and offered some staff a one-time voluntary buyout. The memo from chairman and CEO David Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz arrived about three weeks after the $111 billion deal closed on Oct. 6.

The deal in numbers

• Size: Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery was valued at $111 billion, and the combined company took the Skydance name when it closed on Oct. 6, the Los Angeles Times reported.
• Savings target: Executives have said they aim for more than $6 billion in annualized cost savings within three years, partly through layoffs, Variety reported.
• Buyout window: Opt-in deadlines generally fall around the second week of November, according to Variety’s sources.
• Office return: The five-day policy will be phased in by location, with “ample notice” before changes take effect, the memo says.

What the Skydance memo says

“We believe in-person collaboration is vital to our culture and to the success of our business,” Ellison and Kreiz wrote in the memo, which Variety published in full. “Especially in a creative company like ours, the best ideas come from people in the same room, sharing perspectives, challenging one another and solving problems.” They added that they had “seen the benefits firsthand at Paramount, and we want every part of Skydance to share in them.”

The executives acknowledged that many employees already work on site every day, but said the change “may be a significant change to the daily routines of others.” Managers will be asked to help staff through the transition. Ellison had already put a five-day office rule in place at Paramount before the merger, the Los Angeles Times noted, so the shift falls hardest on legacy Warner Bros. Discovery workers.

How the voluntary buyouts work

The memo calls the offer a Voluntary Buyout Program. “As we bring our teams together, we recognize that not everyone will see their future here, and we respect that,” the executives wrote. Eligible employees will get an individual message with personalized terms and a window to decide.

The memo did not say how many people are eligible or set a target number. Variety reported that eligibility rules and deadlines differ depending on whether a job is union or non-union and whether a worker is on contract or at-will. Business Insider, citing two people familiar with the offer, reported that the baseline package is two weeks of severance for every year an employee has worked at Paramount or Warner Bros. Discovery, and that some staff received enhanced offers. Two Warner Bros. Discovery employees told the outlet they were offered three weeks of pay per year of service.

Questions go to managers or HR, with resources posted on an internal Skydance Integration Hub. Legacy Paramount employees use the My Paramount system, while legacy Warner Bros. staff go through WBD One, according to the memo.

Layoffs still expected

The buyouts come ahead of job cuts the company has already flagged. In their “Day One” memo on Oct. 6, Ellison and Kreiz wrote that integrating the two companies “will bring change, including difficult decisions that affect our workforce.” Skydance has not said how many jobs it expects to eliminate.

The stakes are large for Hollywood. A Los Angeles County report issued in August estimated that the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger could cost some 4,500 film and TV jobs in Los Angeles alone over three years, Variety reported. Kreiz, who ran toy maker Mattel before joining Skydance this month, now shares the top job with Ellison as the company merges two of the oldest studios in the business.

Why it matters beyond Hollywood

Skydance joins a growing list of large employers pushing for full-time office attendance, a debate that has played out at banks, tech firms and other companies across the country. Pairing a strict attendance rule with buyouts gives workers who don’t want to return a way to leave with severance, while cutting headcount without immediate layoffs. Whether that approach reaches the savings target, and how many people take the deal, should become clearer after the November deadlines pass.

The merged studio’s slate is still filling theaters in the meantime; Warner Bros.’ DC horror film topped the charts last weekend, as we reported in our Clayface box office story. For more on how streaming and awards deals are reshaping the industry, see our report on the Emmys’ six-year deal with Amazon Prime Video.

Sources

• Variety: Skydance offers voluntary buyouts, adopts five-day in-office policy (full memo)
• Los Angeles Times: Skydance offers voluntary buyouts to some employees
• Business Insider: Skydance’s buyout offer for employees who don’t want to return to the office
• Deadline: Skydance offers buyouts as it moves to five-day in-office policy