Paramount executives didn’t take any questions during the company’s earnings call on Monday, and ended up blasting the Mission: Impossible theme music on loop to their investors instead.
Bakish has been replaced by what Paramount calls an “Office of the CEO” committee. This panel is formed by three executives — CBS chief George Cheeks, Showtime/MTV Entertainment president and CEO Chris McCarthy, and Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Nickelodeon head Brian Robbins.
However, investors who were hoping to learn more about the leadership changes during Paramount’s earnings call were left hanging. The earnings call ran for only 8 minutes and 50 seconds, and the executives in attendance weren’t open to taking questions.
“We will not be taking questions following our prepared remarks,” Jaime Morris, Paramount’s executive vice president for investor relations, said on Monday. “The main purpose of today’s call is to provide you with the information regarding our first quarter of 2024’s performance.”
The call then ended with Paramount playing the theme song to the studio’s hit franchise Mission: Impossible over and over again, according to accounts from the Financial Times’ Anna Nicolaou, Puck’s Matthew Belloni, and IGN’s Alex Stedman.
The bizarre earnings call on Monday comes at a troubling time for Paramount. The studio, which produced hit films like “Top Gun: Maverick” and the “Transformers” franchise, has been grappling with increased competition from rivals like the streaming giant Netflix.
Paramount’s majority shareholder and board chair Shari Redstone has been circling on a merger deal with David Ellison’s Skydance Media, the Financial Times reported last month.
David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, has been eyeing the studio for some time. There’s also been some speculation amongst industry insiders that the sale could allow Paramount to use Oracle’s technology to boost its entertainment offerings.
Representatives for Paramount didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.
