Last year was a good one for Jeff Shell. This year, not so much.
The short-lived Paramount Skydance boss received a total pay package of $60.7 million in 2025. In April 2026, he was ousted amid a battle with a high-stakes gambler.
Shell may be out of Paramount. chart, but he’s not out of his books yet. Shell’s separation agreement called for cash payments equal to the salary and target bonus he would be eligible to receive, spread over 12 months. Shell’s contract includes a salary of $3.5 million and a target bonus of $1.5 million, so the cash payout should be in the region of $5 million.
The only person whose earnings beat Shell’s during the four months of 2025 that Skydance already controlled at Paramount was the combined company’s CEO, David Ellison, who received a $63 million pay package. No wonder he could vouch for a Warner Bros. show. Discovery. (Just kidding, the accepted bid was backed in the first place by his wealthy father, Oracle founder Larry Ellison.) Paramount Skydance is paying $111 billion to acquire all of Warner Bros. Discovery, pending regulatory approval.
In 2025, Ellison will receive a base salary from Paramount Skydance of $1.4 million, along with stock awards of $58.7 million. He also received an additional compensation of $1.4 million, which included an annual incentive award, as well as services provided to Skydance and Paramount Global prior to the closing date of the deal. Skydance Media completed its $8.4 billion acquisition of Paramount Global on August 7, 2025.
Shell received the same base pay and stock awards as Ellison.
For most of 2025, before Ellison came along, George Cheeks (president and CEO of CBS), Brian Robbins (president and CEO of Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon), and Chris McCarthy (president and CEO of Showtime and MTV Entertainment Studios) shared a “CEO office.” In 2024, the old trio’s total compensation was $61 million: Czech’s share of the pie was $22.1 million, Robbins’ $19.6 million, and McCarthy got $19.5 million.
These compensation packages included their earnings before their promotion to co-CEO positions, and the discrepancies between them reflect differences in the divisions of the company that each oversaw. The old filing indicated that their compensation for their work in the CEO’s office was $6 million each.
