On Friday morning, David Ellison logged on to Elon Musk’s X to announce his media juggernaut combining Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery will be simply known as Skydance. The name, of course, is the same one Ellison gave the small production company he founded in 2006.

“Paramount and Warner Bros. shaped over a century of culture. By combining them, we aren’t rewriting history — we’re equipping these iconic studios with a more powerful engine. Together, we are Skydance: a creative-first home for bold, quality storytelling,” Ellison wrote in a ChatGPT-esque statement that went on to extol the “scale and capabilities of Skydance.”

Along with the script, the 43-year-old posted a sizzle reel for the new media conglomerate, opening with the curious choice of a scene from James Cameron’s “Titanic”—a film about overly confident wealthy people who set sail on an “unsinkable” ship, only to become part of one of history’s greatest tragedies. The two minute video concluded with a graphic showcasing the constellation of core media brands set to operate under Ellison’s control, including the iconic film studios, HBO Max, DC, CBS, Nickelodeon, and, perhaps most interestingly, CNN.

But the merger that has thrust Ellison into the upper echelons of media moguldom, crowning him the young king of Hollywood with a sprawling empire surpassing even that of the Murdochs, will come at a steep cost to the industry he seeks to command, with thousands of jobs set to be axed at the consolidated company.

And while Ellison is preparing to soon announce his new management team, the first dominoes have already started to fall. Paramount streaming boss Cindy Holland announced she was immediately exiting the company, while Warner Bros. studio chiefs Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca were also given the news of their fates. And many, many more painful layoffs are set to come as Ellison’s new company moves to slash billions in costs to contain the massive $80 billion debt load that Skydance will carry.

As if to foreshadow the bloodletting to come, Ellison announced the surprise hire of Mattel boss Ynon Kreiz as co-CEO to “operationalize and manage the businesses.” Kreiz is perhaps best known for turning Mattel’s IP into theatrical releases, riding on the success of “Barbie” as a global phenomenon, and pushing to bring its toy brands, including “Hot Wheels” and “Masters of the Universe” to the big screen. But he is also known for wielding the axe, having slashed roughly 20% of Mattel’s workforce and aggressively reining in costs, moves seemingly intended to satisfy Wall Street, but still coming up short.

Now set to oversee Ellison’s company in a day-to-day management role, Kreiz appears set to wield the axe once again, and there will be much to trim as companies combine. The two major film studios, rival streaming services, television networks, and CNN—with its thousands of employees alone—will face what will surely be deep cuts as the company works to reach some $6 billion in annual cost savings.

Of course, the merger was greenlit despite unprecedented pushback from the entertainment and news industries, with thousands of A-listers and creatives signing their names to petitions protesting Ellison’s acquisition. Paramount investor Gerry Cardinale tried to calm fears of mass firings this week ahead of the merger’s completion, saying the “majority” of the $6 billion in cost cutting won’t come from layoffs.

“If you look at what we have in front of us, the majority of those cost synergies are related to non-labor spend,” he said at the Bloomberg Screentime conference. “We’re going to unify the tech stacks across direct-to-consumer. We already did that with Paramount+ and Pluto and BET+. We’ve already done a hell of a job. Then we’re going to do the same thing when we bring the HBO universe into this.”

But the notion that unifying a tech stack and shuffling real estate holdings will result in the needed cost reductions strains credulity. A report issued by Los Angeles County last month found that the merger will cost some 4,500 film and television jobs over three years. And those who work across Ellison’s new media empire are now buckling up for that stark reality.

“It’s going to be a bloodbath for 12-18 months,” an industry veteran told Status this week, adding, “This will be brutal.”

“For Paramount, there is zero rationale to have two of everything,” the person continued. “Their model does not have two of everything. It probably doesn’t even have one of everything.”

The question is how much of the two companies will now have to be sacrificed to make the economics of Ellison’s empire work. The relatively inexperienced leader faces the herculean task of transforming that sprawling collection of assets into a coherent company capable of competing with Netflix, Disney, and YouTube, while simultaneously stripping billions of dollars in costs from the business. Pulling off both at once will be one of the great tests of Ellison’s young career, with far-reaching implications for the industry.

And if he fails, perhaps the choice of “Titanic” as a first glimpse of the new empire will prove to have been more prescient than he intended.