Why Did Shari Redstone Give Up Control of Paramount?

Shari Redstone, the 71-year-old daughter of the billionaire mogul Sumner Redstone, spent much of her adult life trying to take control of her father’s media empire, which became known as Paramount Global, and the Redstone family legacy. Along the way, she was often belittled and dismissed by her father, underestimated by his top executives and sidelined by his romantic companions.

She succeeded, finally, and in December 2019 became the controlling shareholder of a company then valued at over $25 billion. Ms. Redstone, it seemed, had achieved her life’s goal.

But just five years later, Ms. Redstone decided to give it all up. On July 7, 2024, Paramount announced it would sell itself to Skydance Media, a young Hollywood studio founded by David Ellison, the 42-year-old son of Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder of Oracle. Skydance would pay $8 billion for the company, about a third of the company’s value when she took over. As part of the deal, Skydance would pay $2.4 billion for the Redstone family’s controlling stake, and give Ms. Redstone additional payments amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.

For Ms. Redstone, the life of a media mogul and controlling shareholder proved far less glamorous and satisfying than public perception might suggest. She took over just as streaming upended Hollywood, and Ms. Redstone felt her hands were often tied by independent board members more worried about avoiding lawsuits than confronting the obvious business challenges.

“I just wanted to be free,” Ms. Redstone said in an interview soon after the deal was announced.

Little did she know.

What transpired over the next 13 months, before the deal closed this month, left Ms. Redstone reeling and her reputation battered. In short order, Donald J. Trump sued CBS over a “60 Minutes” interview of Vice President Kamala Harris. Mr. Trump was elected president a week later, and after the inauguration his administration needed to approve the deal. That put Ms. Redstone in an untenable situation: Any attempt to settle the lawsuit, even if it was in the best interest of the company, would be viewed by many, including prominent on-air voices at CBS, as appeasement. Two senators went so far as to suggest any payment by CBS to settle the Trump lawsuit could constitute bribery.

Although Ms. Redstone personally withdrew from settlement talks, she remained the public face of Paramount and CBS as nonexecutive chair. She was accused of greed, conflicts of interest and selling out CBS News. One all-caps headline on the widely read Drudge Report described her as the “Woman Who Destroyed CBS News.”

As criticism of her was peaking, Ms. Redstone was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. She underwent surgery in May, when doctors discovered the cancer had spread to her vocal cords, requiring a further regimen of radiation treatments.

Through it all, Ms. Redstone made almost no public comment. She felt constrained by her status as the controlling shareholder, the pending regulatory review and the near-certainty of shareholder lawsuits. She tried to wall herself off by not reading media accounts, but was nonetheless aware that her motives were being constantly maligned. Especially hurtful were comments from Lesley Stahl, the longtime “60 Minutes” correspondent, who told The New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick, that she was angry with Ms. Redstone.

As Ms. Redstone found herself caught in the cross hairs of political and cultural wars, she also continued to oversee her troubled company not knowing if she was a lame duck or if the deal with Skydance would fall through. As the deal hit roadblocks, she forced out a chief executive and four directors, upsetting two whom she had once numbered among her close friends.

Ms. Redstone described her motivations and frustrations, and the emotional roller coaster she experienced, in a series of interviews with The New York Times over the past year in person and via video calls. The interviews were conducted with the understanding that nothing discussed could be used until after the merger closed, since anything she said might derail its approval. The Times also interviewed many other participants before and after the deal closed, providing the fullest account yet of how she handled a deal that riveted investors, politicians and millions of CBS, cable and movie viewers.

‘It Was No Fun’

Trained as a social worker, with a law degree from Boston University, Ms. Redstone was never entirely comfortable overseeing the company, making the rounds at Sun Valley and stepping out on Hollywood red carpets. Exasperated and hurt by repeated clashes with her strong-willed father, who built a media powerhouse after inheriting some drive-in theaters outside Boston, she had come close to selling her stake before the 2008 financial crisis.

But by 2014 her father had fallen under the sway of two ambitious women, a current and a former companion. They moved into his Los Angeles mansion; all but cut off communication with his family members, including Ms. Redstone; and plotted to gain control of his fortune and empire. Ms. Redstone felt she had no choice but to fight for her family’s legacy. After Mr. Redstone finally evicted the women from his home and reconciled with his daughter, Ms. Redstone encouraged her father to sue the women for elder abuse. The case was settled without any admission of wrongdoing.

Ms. Redstone then took over the family business, National Amusements, started by her grandfather. National Amusements owned 10 percent of all the stock but 80 percent of the voting shares in Viacom and CBS, which were separate at the time. She combined them and eventually called the entity Paramount Global, a media giant that owned Paramount Pictures, the movie studio; cable channels including MTV and Comedy Central; and the CBS broadcast network.

She said she knew big changes and deep pockets were needed at Paramount to survive the seismic upheaval in the media industry, with Netflix and Amazon disrupting the lucrative cable business model her father had helped create. (Last year, Netflix spent nearly $15.3 billion on content creation; Paramount spent $4.4 billion, according to MoffettNathanson Research.)

But, she said, she soon discovered how little control she had to make those changes. Lawyers advised her to name independent directors to protect herself and the company from shareholder lawsuits, including some that had accused Ms. Redstone of self-dealing in the Viacom-CBS merger. That move led, she and others said, to constant tension between these independent directors and directors openly aligned with Ms. Redstone on a variety of issues.

“When my father brought me into Viacom, it was fun,” Ms. Redstone said. “Once that battle began, it was no fun. I’ve been in constant litigation.”

Ms. Redstone also had her family to consider, and her three children — Tyler, Kimberlee and Brandon — were urging her to sell. The family trust was becoming increasingly cumbersome to administer as the number of beneficiaries grew.

While her father was still alive, Ms. Redstone felt her mission was to support him and keep his empire intact. But once he was gone, in 2020, her focus shifted. “My legacy was to create security for my family and to put the company in good hands,” she said.

Still, Ms. Redstone said, she couldn’t quite reconcile herself to the drastic step of selling National Amusements and giving up control of Paramount. Potential buyers reached out over the years. David Ellison pressed his case several times, including over breakfast at the Four Seasons hotel in Beverly Hills in 2023. Ms. Redstone was noncommittal.

That all changed on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded Israel.

The attack had a profound impact on Ms. Redstone, an ardent supporter of Israel whose ex-husband, Yitzhak Korff, known as Ira, is a rabbi and direct descendant of the founder of the Hasidic movement. (Her son Tyler is also a rabbi.)

“Once that happened, I wanted out,” she said. “I wanted to support Israel, and address issues around antisemitism and racism.”

Soon after, Mr. Ellison reached out again. His timing was fortuitous.

‘We’ll Have a Good Life’

In December, Mr. Ellison and Ms. Redstone, as well as her son Tyler and their respective bankers, met at her beachfront home in Connecticut overlooking Long Island Sound. Mr. Ellison, 40 years old at the time, had never run a sprawling media operation like Paramount. But he had a successful track record working with the company: Skydance had helped finance and produce the “Mission: Impossible” series since 2011 as well as the wildly successful “Top Gun: Maverick,” both with Tom Cruise, in 2022.

At the meeting, Ms. Redstone and others said, Mr. Ellison pledged to keep the Paramount name, expand the company and honor the Redstone legacy. Those promises naturally appealed to the family. Later, he even invited Ms. Redstone and her son to join the board of the new company. (The Redstones never took him up on the offer.)

Mr. Ellison also had deep pockets: Apart from his family fortune — his father’s net worth has been estimated at close to $300 billion — he had recently completed financing deals that valued Skydance at over $4 billion.

What most impressed Ms. Redstone, though, was his vision for the future and a willingness to invest the huge sums at his disposal. At a time when legacy studios were scrambling to finance the next potential blockbuster, Mr. Ellison talked about his ability to make strategic acquisitions (perhaps even a stake in TikTok, the wildly popular video-sharing platform, the Redstones speculated) and unify Paramount’s disparate technology platforms.

Other suitors for the business soon surfaced. Among them were Edgar Bronfman, the Seagram heir and former head of Universal, and a team of Barry Diller and Michael Eisner, who had run Paramount starting in the 1970s before Mr. Diller headed off to Fox and Mr. Eisner to Disney.

Paramount’s ownership structure complicated the talks as the Redstones, other owners of voting shares and minority shareholders jockeyed for position. Leaks to the press from inside the boardroom led to finger-pointing among board members. Some of the independent directors, in Ms. Redstone’s view, were too cautious about allowing potential bidders access to Paramount’s books, and too worried about getting sued.

Increasingly frustrated, Ms. Redstone and other directors moved to shrink the board to seven members from 11 to make it easier to get agreement. She even agreed to remove two close friends, damaging their relationships: Nicole Seligman, former president of Sony Corporation of America, and Dawn Ostroff, former chief content officer of Spotify. (Ms. Redstone said she had been working since then to smooth things over.)

Since choosing Bob Bakish as chief executive in 2019, Ms. Redstone had routinely heaped effusive praise on him at board meetings. She felt he had done an excellent job at merging Viacom and CBS. But as Paramount stock declined and deal talks languished, those plaudits dwindled to nothing and were replaced by complaints about his failure to cut overhead and his lack of vision for the streaming era, according to board members at the time. In April 2024, he left under pressure from Ms. Redstone and the board and was succeeded by an unorthodox triumvirate of chief executives: George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy and Brian Robbins.

Despite interest in the company, no one was willing to top the Skydance offer. Ms. Redstone agreed to negotiate exclusively with Mr. Ellison after they agreed on the broad framework for a deal, including a price for the Redstone-owned National Amusements. But the next month, Skydance unveiled a new offer that reduced the payment for National Amusements while increasing payments to other shareholders. Ms. Redstone was angry that Mr. Ellison had, in her view, breached the terms of their earlier agreement, and she began having doubts that Mr. Ellison was the right person to take control of her family’s assets. Ms. Redstone’s lawyers sent an email to Paramount’s board calling off the deal. Paramount stock plunged.

But the deal wasn’t dead. With other suitors again circling for National Amusements and Mr. Diller and Mr. Eisner preparing an offer, Mr. Ellison quickly resumed his push for a deal. Skydance raised its bid to $2.4 billion for the family stake, Ms. Redstone accepted, and Paramount’s board voted to approve the deal.

The Skydance deal was announced on July 7. Although she hadn’t sold at anywhere near the top of the market, and had developed doubts about Mr. Ellison, Ms. Redstone was pleased. “We’ll have a good life and the ability to make an impact on the world,” she said in an interview at the time. “The family is all in this together, and we can advocate for the causes we love.”

Ms. Redstone felt a burden had been lifted, she said, and friends said she seemed happier than she had been in years.

The Biden Justice Department soon signed off, dismissing any antitrust issues. Only one other regulatory roadblock remained: the Federal Communications Commission, which needed to approve the transfer of CBS’s broadcast licenses as being in the public interest. Ms. Redstone thought that was a mere formality.

It became anything but.

‘Best Interest to Settle’

Mr. Trump seized on the discrepancy, arguing that “60 Minutes” had “doctored” her “word salad” of an answer to make her look better and hurt his election chances. He demanded that CBS release the full unedited tape of her interview. “We can do it the nice way or the hard way,” he warned on Truth Social.

Even though Mr. Cheeks saw no reason not to, CBS News executives refused to release the unedited footage. It proved a fateful decision. Mr. Trump pursued what he called the “hard way.” On Nov. 1, he sued CBS in federal court in Amarillo, Texas, and demanded $10 billion in damages, a figure he later revised to $20 billion. Though neither CBS nor Mr. Trump is based in Texas, it was a venue with only one federal judge, Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, who has a long record of supporting conservative causes.

Ms. Redstone and her lawyers initially brushed off the threat. “60 Minutes” had simply engaged in routine editing of an extended interview, an editorial function protected by the First Amendment. Many legal experts dismissed Mr. Trump’s claim as frivolous.

It didn’t occur to Ms. Redstone, she said, that the case might affect the Skydance merger. And once Mr. Trump was president, with far more important issues to deal with, he might well drop the lawsuit, her advisers suggested. After all, his election victory seemed to demonstrate that the network’s editing of the Harris interview hadn’t damaged his campaign.

Nevertheless, CBS was now a defendant in a lawsuit brought by a man who would preside over a bevy of issues relevant to Paramount’s future. Ms. Redstone did not want the case to hang over business that Paramount might have with the administration.

Then in December, ABC settled a defamation suit brought against the network by Mr. Trump that many legal experts also considered to be weak. The network agreed to contribute $15 million to Mr. Trump’s presidential library, pay $1 million in legal fees and say it regretted its statement on air that Mr. Trump had been found “liable for rape.” (He had been found liable for sexual abuse, and not rape, as defined by New York’s narrow definition of rape.)

Ms. Redstone thought the deal by Disney, ABC’s owner, made sense, given the high costs and risks of litigation. The $16 million was a modest sum for Disney. And while ABC faced sharp criticism that it had capitulated to extortion, the worst of it soon dissipated.

Ms. Redstone made her desire for a Paramount settlement with Mr. Trump well known within her company, and she hoped a deal could be reached quickly.

Those hopes were soon dashed. Mr. Trump’s inauguration came and went with no sign he might be willing to settle, let alone drop the case. At the same time, CBS News personnel were adamantly opposed to any settlement of such a flimsy case. By late January there had been sporadic settlement talks, but the two sides remained far apart.

Paramount and Skydance insisted that the president’s lawsuit was entirely separate from any F.C.C. approval, but the two proceedings were soon intertwined: A conservative group lodged a protest with the agency echoing the language of Mr. Trump’s complaint, and the F.C.C. demanded that Paramount produce all information relevant to the “60 Minutes” broadcast, including the full transcript of the Harris interview, which the company did despite reservations within the news division.

Adverse rulings in Texas also weighed on Ms. Redstone and her son. Judge Kacsmaryk rejected the company’s motion to dismiss the case and refused to transfer the case to New York when Mr. Trump’s lawyers filed a revised complaint. Even though CBS filed new motions to dismiss or transfer the case, Ms. Redstone and Tyler thought the outcome seemed unlikely to be any different. The population of Amarillo, from where the jury pool would be chosen, had voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Trump. The judge set a trial date for September 2026, guaranteeing at least another year of distraction and wide-ranging discovery, allowing Mr. Trump’s lawyers to investigate the inner workings of CBS News.

The Redstones also worried that Mr. Trump’s lawyers could cherry-pick raw footage and internal communications and do more damage to CBS News’s reputation than any settlement would. Ms. Redstone said CBS personnel had told her that in October 2023, when Scott Pelley of “60 Minutes” interviewed President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the president had seemed drowsy and had to be prodded to answer. She and Tyler worried that CBS might be accused of editing the interview to conceal Mr. Biden’s failings.

“This case was never as black-and-white as people assumed,” Ms. Redstone said.

One person who witnessed the interview in person, and another who recently reviewed the raw footage, said the Redstones’ concerns about the Biden interview were overblown. Mr. Biden gave some typically circuitous answers, but he never had to be prodded, they said. On air, Mr. Pelley characterized Mr. Biden as seeming “tired.”

A spokesman for CBS declined to comment.

On Jan. 31, 2025, speaking on a video call, Ms. Redstone told the Paramount board that she had decided to personally withdraw from any further involvement in settlement negotiations because she recognized that her participation would be scrutinized in any subsequent litigation. Although any settlement would now be up to the board, she also delivered to directors a passionate argument for reaching one.

“I believed it was always in Paramount’s best interest to settle,” she said in an interview around that time. “We may not like the world we live in, but a board has to do what’s in the best interest of shareholders.”

Ms. Redstone said she found most of Mr. Trump’s claims about CBS News to be hyperbolic. But she also had her own concerns about how the news division handled criticism of Israel.

A week before her board presentation, she had complained to Mr. Cheeks, who oversaw all of CBS, about a “60 Minutes” segment featuring former State Department officials who quit their jobs to protest American support for Israel’s war in Gaza. The segment touched on the Hamas attack on Israel but focused on alleged Israeli atrocities enabled by weapons supplied by the United States. Ms. Redstone wasn’t alone in her dismay: The American Jewish Committee said the segment was “shockingly one-sided, lacked factual accuracy, and relied heavily on misguided information.”

Maybe, she thought, Mr. Trump’s criticism of the news division, and his lawsuit, could be helpful.

“We needed more balance,” Ms. Redstone said in an interview, referring to that segment and others over the years. “Part of me thought, maybe Trump could accomplish what I never got done.”

Prompted by Ms. Redstone’s complaints and his own concerns about the Gaza episode, Mr. Cheeks named a veteran CBS producer, Susan Zirinsky, to a new role as executive editor of CBS News in charge of standards. Her job included reviewing the journalism produced by “60 Minutes,” which until then had always vetted its own material for accuracy and fairness. Ms. Redstone applauded the move.

Bill Owens, the longtime executive producer, felt that Ms. Zirinsky’s arrival undermined his autonomy, and he and CBS began negotiating his exit.

In mid-April, Mr. Owens announced his departure. “It’s clear the company is done with me,” he said. That remark was widely interpreted to mean CBS was compromising its independence to appease Mr. Trump — with Ms. Redstone getting most of the blame.

That interpretation was only reinforced at the end of that week’s “60 Minutes” broadcast. On air in front of millions of viewers, Mr. Pelley blamed Paramount for Mr. Owens’s departure. He warned that the era of “honest” journalism at CBS might be ending and noted Paramount’s need to gain Mr. Trump’s approval for the merger to go forward.

Ms. Redstone had run into one of the same problems now confronting other targets of Mr. Trump’s wrath, such as universities: Any change that aligns with his demands, even if warranted, is perceived as capitulation and appeasement.

Soon after, on May 4, “60 Minutes” ran a segment about Mr. Trump’s campaign against major law firms, narrated by Mr. Pelley. The featured guest compared Mr. Trump to a “mob boss.”

Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Edward Paltzik, promptly sent a letter threatening to sue CBS, this time in Florida, another Trump-friendly jurisdiction. While the segment should have dispelled any concern that CBS was going soft on Mr. Trump, Ms. Redstone worried about the prospect of even more prolonged and costly litigation with the president.

‘Blown Away’

In her own mind, Ms. Redstone had always separated the lawsuit from F.C.C. approval of the deal. But she wasn’t blind to the possibility that without a settlement, the F.C.C. would let its review go on indefinitely, and Skydance might abandon the deal.

Lawyers for Skydance repeatedly pushed Paramount for a settlement, and warned that the deal might collapse without it. At one point a Skydance lawyer suggested that a large donation by Paramount to the Kennedy Center might generate warm feelings at the White House and smooth the path forward, according to a person involved in discussions between the companies. Paramount rejected that as inappropriate.

As summer approached, Ms. Redstone seemed resigned to the possibility the deal would expire. “If it closes it will be great for the company. If it doesn’t, we’ll look at other things,” she said at the time. She seemed uncharacteristically discouraged and, though she didn’t make any mention of it then, was grappling with the outcome of her recent surgery.

She didn’t say what those “other things” might be, but pointed to the company’s recent successes under its new leadership. Despite its belated entry into streaming, by May Paramount+ had emerged as the fourth-largest streaming service measured by subscribers, according to Nielsen figures, behind Netflix, Amazon and Disney. CBS was the No. 1 broadcast network, with four of the five top-rated shows.

She soon had other reasons to be optimistic. On June 8, she fulfilled another longtime dream: She took the stage at Radio City Music Hall as a co-producer of “Sunset Boulevard,” which won a Tony Award for best musical revival. And more important, after she finished radiation treatments in June, her medical prognosis was good. She looked healthier and felt renewed energy.

Then, on July 2, Ms. Redstone’s lawyer called her with the news she had been hoping for: The board and Mr. Trump had reached a settlement. Paramount would pay $16 million toward Mr. Trump’s eventual presidential library and to cover his legal costs. CBS pledged to release transcripts of future “60 Minutes” interviews with presidential candidates. Most important to Mr. Cheeks: There would be no apology or admission of wrongdoing. And Mr. Trump agreed not to file any more lawsuits over coverage by CBS up to the date of the settlement, which ended the threat of a lawsuit over the law firm segment.

“I was blown away,” Ms. Redstone said after the settlement was announced. She was expecting a much higher price.

“How did they do it?” she said. “I don’t know, and I didn’t ask.”

There was nonetheless a chorus of criticism that CBS and Ms. Redstone had capitulated to Mr. Trump’s demands, and the president himself declared victory. But for Ms. Redstone the settlement was a “no-brainer,” she said. The critics weren’t privy to the many factors that went into the decision.

But her euphoria over the terms of the deal was soon clouded. Fox News reported late that night that there was also a “side deal” worth upward of $20 million in free advertising, public service announcements or other programming presumably friendly to Mr. Trump. That was news to Ms. Redstone, and she was upset.

The next day a lawyer for Skydance at the law firm Latham & Watkins reached out to a lawyer for Ms. Redstone. Notes of the conversation dated July 3, subsequently circulated within Paramount, quoted the Skydance lawyer as saying — twice — that reports of a side deal were “unmitigated false bullshit” and that it was “important for Shari to know this.” The lawyer added, “They would appreciate it if we were not recounting that to others, especially in the press.” A spokesman for Latham & Watkins declined to comment.

The Paramount board issued a statement saying it “has no knowledge of any promises or commitments made to President Trump other than those set forth in the settlement.”

A couple of weeks after the settlement with Mr. Trump, Mr. Ellison met Brendan Carr, the chairman of the F.C.C., to urge approval of the merger. According to a letter filed with the F.C.C. by Skydance describing the meeting, Mr. Ellison pledged to make sure news coverage included multiple viewpoints, and to abolish any vestiges of diversity, equity and inclusion in hiring and personnel policies. There was no mention of any promise to give Mr. Trump $20 million in ads.

On July 22, Mr. Trump said on his Truth Social platform that he had received the $16 million and reiterated that he would receive another $20 million in free advertising. In a recent interview, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s legal team insisted there was an unwritten understanding between the president and the owners of Skydance.

Asked repeatedly about such a side deal, Skydance has said it wasn’t a party to the lawsuit and had no involvement in settlement negotiations, and stressed that it had complied with “our nation’s anti-bribery laws.” But Skydance hasn’t directly contradicted Mr. Trump.

“I hope it isn’t true,” Ms. Redstone said in a recent interview.

The truth should become apparent when CBS does — or does not — air public service announcements or other advertising at Mr. Trump’s behest.

‘We Did What We Set Out to Do’

That Ms. Redstone’s views no longer mattered became fully apparent to her on July 17, when Mr. Cheeks called Ms. Redstone to tell her that CBS wouldn’t renew Stephen Colbert’s contract for “The Late Show” when it expired next year. Mr. Colbert was about to announce the decision on that night’s program, and Mr. Cheeks didn’t want Ms. Redstone to be blindsided.

Mr. Cheeks routinely canceled shows without consulting Ms. Redstone, but “The Late Show” wasn’t just anther CBS program. Mr. Colbert had a passionate fan base and was a prominent critic of Mr. Trump. Just three days earlier, he had described CBS’s settlement as a “big fat bribe.” While she didn’t necessarily disagree with the Colbert decision, Ms. Redstone said, she was mostly distressed that she hadn’t been consulted.

Mr. Colbert’s dramatic on-air announcement ignited a firestorm of criticism, much of it directed at her. Although she had nothing to do with the decision, she was still inseparable from CBS. Many of Mr. Colbert’s fans and top Democrats accused CBS and Ms. Redstone of again trying to curry favor with the Trump administration.

CBS has insisted the decision was purely financial — that the show lost tens of millions of dollars each year. The show’s business struggles had been discussed in board meetings for over a year. The timing of the announcement, executives say, was necessitated by imminent contract negotiations.

Still, there was no denying that it was another decision that pleased Mr. Trump. “I absolutely love that Colbert was fired,” the president posted on Truth Social.

Just a week later, the F.C.C. finally approved the merger. “It is time for a change,” Mr. Carr said, citing Mr. Ellison’s assurances regarding bias and diversity. He praised Skydance’s “commitment to make significant changes at the once storied CBS broadcast network.”

For Ms. Redstone, the long-sought outcome was bittersweet, ending four decades of her family’s prominent role in American business, culture and politics — something she, and her father before her, had achieved only after prodigious struggle, constant scrutiny and, at times, scathing criticism. “While it is never easy to step away, please know that it has been an honor for my family and for me to serve as stewards of these assets for decades,” she said on July 31 during a call to discuss Paramount’s latest earnings, her last as Paramount’s nonexecutive chairman.

Despite “many challenges,” she told The Times afterward, “we did what we set out to do.”

Given all she has been through, Ms. Redstone isn’t one to dwell on the past. If she feels any regrets about selling now — or not selling sooner, at a much higher price — or if she’d do anything else differently, she isn’t saying. Besides her philanthropic work, she said, she’ll continue to produce movies, other media and Broadway theater. “Content is king,” she said, quoting her father’s favorite mantra.

The family had no plans to celebrate the final closing on Aug. 7. A few days later, she was confronted with a class-action lawsuit claiming the Skydance merger was “unfair and inequitable” to other shareholders.

Michael M. Grynbaum, Lauren Hirsch and Benjamin Mullin contributed reporting.