The man who turned Barbie into a billion-dollar movie just got one of the richest welcome packages in Hollywood history. Ynon Kreiz, the outgoing CEO of Mattel, has signed a five-year contract to become co-CEO of Paramount alongside David Ellison, and his first year on the job will pay him more than $46.5 million, according to an SEC filing made Thursday.
The headline number is the signing award: $31.5 million in restricted stock units, granted up front and fully vested. It is the single largest piece of a package that also includes a $5 million base salary (once the merger closes), a $4.9 million target bonus, 1.25 million pre-closing shares, up to $5.1 million more in RSUs within 15 days of the Warner Bros. Discovery closing, and annual equity awards of $20.1 million starting on his first anniversary.
For context, Kreiz made $15.1 million in total compensation at Mattel in 2025. His new first-year package is roughly triple that.
Kreiz, 61, starts October 5, one day before Paramount is set to close its $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. The timing is no accident. The deal cleared its final legal hurdle this week when a federal judge approved Paramount's settlement with 12 state attorneys general, ending months of antitrust litigation. Under the settlement, the combined company must release at least 30 films a year in U.S. theaters for five years and invest an additional $300 million a year in American production. A separate deal with the Writers Guild sends $17.5 million to the guild's health fund and preserves WGA staffing levels at CBS News for five years.
Ellison will remain chairman and CEO of the combined company, with Kreiz as his co-CEO and a new board member. Paramount laid out the division of labor plainly: Ellison handles long-term strategy, creative vision, talent relationships, technology, and capital allocation. Kreiz runs day-to-day management and the integration of the two companies, whose businesses will report jointly to both men.
The pairing is deliberate. Ellison is the creative-side billionaire who built Skydance. Kreiz is the operator. At Mattel since 2018, he took a toymaker known for plastic and turned its brands into film, television, and games, culminating in "Barbie," which became Warner Bros.' highest-grossing film ever. Before Mattel, he co-founded Fox Kids Europe, ran "Big Brother" producer Endemol, and sold the YouTube network Maker Studios to Disney in 2014. He has spent his career converting intellectual property into franchises, which is exactly the job description at a studio sitting on DC, Harry Potter, Mission: Impossible, and Barbie itself.
Outgoing Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, meanwhile, exits with a package reported at half a billion in stocks and cash.
For actors, the Kreiz hire is the clearest signal yet of how the merged studio will actually run. Ellison keeps the creative relationships and the long-term vision, but the person deciding what gets greenlit, how productions are managed, and how the two studio machineries merge is a man whose biggest hit came from treating a doll like a four-quadrant tentpole. The $31.5 million signing bonus is not just a number. It is the price of the operator Ellison believes he needs to make the biggest merger in modern Hollywood actually work.