Larry Ellison is already one of the richest people in tech. Now, his family is putting its stamp on Hollywood. Larry's billion-dollar triumph at Oracle enabled his kids Megan and David to finance their moviemaking ambitions. Megan's film studio, Annapurna, became a magnet for award-winning directors, while David's company, Skydance, is in talks to take over Paramount. Find out how this free-spending family is using its tech riches to defy the Hollywood stereotype of "dumb money."
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00:00This is Flyboys, an otherwise unremarkable 2006 action movie except for this one thing.
00:08It saw the debut of an actor named David Ellison, but it's not his performance that's notable.
00:16It's that a 23-year-old USC film school dropout at least partly paid for the film's
00:21unrecouped production budget.
00:23See, David is tech billionaire Larry Ellison's son, and 20 years later, with his family waiting
00:28in the wings, he's poised to take over a major pillar of Hollywood, bringing even more
00:38tech billions to our screens.
00:40You need to know the Ellisons.
00:42Not just because they're rich, not just because they're princes of tech, but because
00:45they're becoming a major force in Hollywood.
00:48We'll explain.
00:55Larry Ellison, David's father, is among the world's richest people, even if his large
01:00stock holdings make it hard to pinpoint just how rich he is.
01:04Due to a recent hot streak in the stock market, Bloomberg pegged him at $168 billion on September
01:0910th, 2024.
01:11Quartz had him at $192 billion on September 12th, and a day later, CNBC said he spiked
01:17at $208 billion.
01:20His net worth ballooned by $40 billion in two days by simply existing, briefly surpassing
01:26Jeff Bezos to become the world's second richest person.
01:29Of course, with great money comes great marketability.
01:32There are breathless fortune covers, a cameo in Iron Man 2, and an endless parade of headshots
01:41and society photos, sometimes with some new ingenue.
01:45But Larry Ellison didn't start rich.
01:47A great aunt and accountant uncle adopted Larry and raised him in a safe community in
01:51South Chicago, albeit too modest for Larry's taste.
01:55Even in his childhood, he was a nonconformist, ignoring class to read his own books and enrolling
02:00in at least two colleges before dropping out.
02:03In his 20s and early 30s, he struggled to pay off a big spending habit by working as
02:08a wandering programmer.
02:09But finally, in his 30s, Larry hit gold.
02:12The company he founded, which eventually became Oracle after its main product, started
02:17in 1977 after Larry and his two co-founders borrowed ideas from an IBM research paper
02:23and actually built them.
02:25The language they made solved a big problem.
02:27Old databases stored information but couldn't retrieve it well, but the so-called relational
02:32model put things in tables with built-in connections between data, so you could get to it much
02:38faster.
02:39The CIA was Oracle's first contract, $50,000 in 1978, because spies, of course, need to
02:45keep track of large numbers of people.
02:47In fact, all levels of government do, which is still where a sizable chunk of Oracle's
02:52revenue comes from.
02:5311 out of its first 12 years, Oracle's sales doubled in size, continuing up to $50 billion
02:59in recent years as they expanded to cloud infrastructure and healthcare.
03:03Using the now-familiar model of other tech giants, grandiose Larry, a skilled if disinterested
03:09programmer, was cast as the visionary.
03:12Stallwart Bob Minor was the builder.
03:14So Larry assumed this natural role as face and voice of the company.
03:19He could articulate why the world needed Oracle, and he was a visionary.
03:23Of course, he did the standard cheesy conferences in turtlenecks, too.
03:28As frontman, Larry also played bad boy, killing smaller competitors, riling up bigger ones
03:33like his sometimes feud with his white whale, Bill Gates.
03:36Nothing's new.
03:37Microsoft continues to do what they always do, which is to keep the price of Windows
03:40high and copy other people's software and just add it to Windows.
03:44He could take things too far.
03:45Once, as part of an anti-monopoly trial, Oracle even paid private detectives to sift through
03:50the trash of allegedly pro-Microsoft lobbying groups for discrediting evidence.
03:55He also received heat for ditching his own keynote address at an Oracle conference, which
03:59people paid to attend, just to watch his boat in a race.
04:03But whatever his shenanigans, Larry was always forgiven, because the company had a stock
04:08that looks like it guzzled rocket fuel.
04:10And he did all that with a relatively tiny buy-in.
04:13There are different figures floating around, but none are higher than $10,000.
04:18Contrary to Larry's humble beginnings, his kids grew up with privilege in the picturesque
04:23town of Woodside, California in the 1980s, mostly with their mom, Barbara, following
04:28her divorce from Larry when the kids were young.
04:31According to GQ, Larry was financially supportive, but not necessarily engaged until the children's
04:37teenage years.
04:38According to Image Conscious David, Barbara tried to keep the kids fairly normal, with
04:42chores and a $5 a week allowance.
04:44And they also had a relatable passion for movies, sitting around and watching their
04:48collection of tapes, even acting out the dialogue.
04:51Although, to be fair, their collection numbered 3,000.
04:54It's like that scene in Hot Fuzz.
04:56In fact, David often gushes about a revelatory moment in his life when he went to see Terminator
05:042 in theaters as an 8-year-old.
05:07More on that later.
05:08But dig underneath the veneer of normalcy, and you'll find that privilege.
05:11According to The Hollywood Reporter, Barbara had to step in to prevent Larry from taking
05:15David to a Boeing flight simulator in Seattle when David hadn't finished his homework.
05:20On vacation in Saint-Tropez, Megan would go out on speedboats with the son of a billionaire
05:25Saudi prince.
05:27The kids also had these undeniably lavish hobbies, like Megan's equestrian or David's
05:32aerobatics.
05:33That's stunt flying.
05:34One of the more egregious stories was when Larry and a teenage David flew out in their
05:39own planes over the Pacific to do mock dogfighting.
05:42Outside of her equestrian wins, Megan's childhood is a little harder to see, but that's
05:47kind of characteristic of the most private Ellison.
05:50But following that early passion for movies, both kids found themselves drawn to Hollywood
05:54in college, and at least some of their startup cash came from their now-billionaire father.
06:00Hollywood has this old term, dumb money, reserved, often unfairly, for unwitting affluent types
06:05who come to LA with a passion for movies.
06:08Hollywood takes their money, and they get screwed in the process.
06:11The most famous example is, perhaps, Howard Hughes, but the desire among those with immense
06:15wealth to reshape culture and leave a legacy hasn't gone anywhere.
06:20Modern examples include recognizable names like Sackler, known for their company's involvement
06:24in the opioid epidemic.
06:26Michael Sackler, an heir on the family's English side who was a minor when allegations
06:30arose, helped finance The Witch, for instance.
06:33There's the sense from some contemporary reports that some unscrupulous executives
06:38were drooling at the chance to fleece the Ellison kids.
06:41We don't know how much they had then, or now, but there are reports of stock transfers
06:45worth at least $306 million each.
06:49Whatever it was, it was enough for David to start his own production company four years
06:53after Flyboys went down in flames, an event that shook the younger Ellison so much he
06:58had a cardiac event after it.
07:00The new company was called Skydance, after his love of stunt flying.
07:04By raising an astonishing $350 million, he enticed Paramount into a four-year production
07:10deal.
07:11This was a USC dropout who'd basically only made one bad movie, but when you have both
07:16Steve Jobs and David Geffen as advisors and can leverage your very famous name to orchestrate
07:21investments, it's a different story.
07:24Both Ellison kids worked as executive producers on the $38 million Western True Grit, and
07:29there's this sense that it was sort of a test case for their taste level.
07:33It was a huge hit right out of the gate, totally upending the dumb money narrative.
07:38From then on, Skydance worked on heavy hitters, everything from Star Trek to Mission Impossible,
07:43and that's David's taste.
07:45He likes spectacle, and he's good at making it profitable.
07:48Inside, he's still the kid who went gaga over Terminator 2.
07:53And like a Terminator, he's very logical, data-oriented, dedicated, doesn't drink,
07:58likes explosions.
08:00But True Grit was Megan's springboard too.
08:02Like the other Ellisons, she was a college dropout.
08:05Around that time, as she was rumored to have gained access to a billion-dollar trust fund,
08:10she founded a production company called Annapurna, named after the Himalayan peak.
08:14And while Annapurna didn't churn out blockbusters like Skydance did, Megan developed a reputation
08:19of her own.
08:20She was the artistic Ellison, the one with taste, the friend to directors, the devotee
08:25of Altman, the savior of quality mid-budget pictures.
08:30Although shy, she'd hang out with actors like Jessica Chastain and Jason Clarke in
08:34exotic locations, drinking gin and tonics on hotel rooftops.
08:38And also I want to thank the filmmakers, the artists, the crazy voices like Spike Jonze
08:43in the room here, who doubles as my personal therapist.
08:46And she'd pay more, sometimes double, defying Hollywood wisdom on films from directors
08:50she liked, like Paul Thomas Anderson.
08:52Yes, she's the Ellison kid who got a write-up in Vanity Fair.
08:56While she was still in her 20s, she won gold for Zero Dark Thirty, Her, and American Hustle.
09:02But unlike some other Hollywood nepo-babies, there's no sense that this early success
09:06went to David and Megan's heads.
09:09Over the years, there are occasional mentions of David's helicopter or the $30 million
09:14mansion Megan owned, but they're nowhere near the excess of some of their peers.
09:18Or their father.
09:19After all, this is a man that actually owns the Hawaiian island of Ladai.
09:23He owns it.
09:25He shared an 82-room yacht with music mogul David Geffen until he decided he needed his
09:29own.
09:30Or extravagantly, he installed basketball courts on those yachts.
09:34Balls that go overboard are fished out by a trailing speedboat.
09:38It should be noted, though, that Larry gives wealth away, too.
09:41A lot of it is your typical billionaire-add-a-wing-on-a-hospital type of thing, but sometimes the causes are
09:46a bit more partisan.
09:48Controversially, Larry, who is Jewish and has close ties to the Israeli Prime Minister
09:53Benjamin Netanyahu, has donated to archaeological projects in East Jerusalem that critics say
09:58undermine Palestinian claims there.
10:01Especially in his old age, Larry has swerved to the right, hosting MAGA fundraisers, joining
10:06a conference call exploring the possibility of contesting then-former President Trump's
10:112020 election loss, and touting a now-debunked anti-malarial drug to the president as a possible
10:16cure for COVID.
10:17Trump has reciprocated, describing Oracle as a quote-unquote great company, and suggesting
10:22them as a preferred partner for purchasing TikTok.
10:25It's probably only fair to point out that Larry seems like a generous father, too, but
10:29he isn't always a passive investor.
10:31Back in Annapurna, when Meghan oversaw a failed move to get into film distribution, a series
10:36of high-profile flops, and even bigger passes on big films like Bombshell and Hustlers,
10:42Larry and team came in to oversee the studio's books.
10:46It might be unrelated, but soon thereafter Meghan reportedly came unraveled, vanishing
10:51from the company she founded.
10:53It was reportedly only the studio's acquisition of the Oscar-nominated Nimona that lured Meghan
10:58back and rejuvenated her.
10:59Their future slate includes more animated projects from the Nimona creators, plus video
11:04game adaptations spinning out from their award-winning gaming division, Annapurna Interactive.
11:10But even that may be problematic, since the entire gaming division, until recently a bright
11:15spot, quit en masse after failing to convince Ellison to let them spin off into an independent
11:21company.
11:22Paramount's had some notable missteps.
11:24He hired animator John Lasseter despite accusations of sexual impropriety at Pixar, and sadly
11:30David's reboot of his beloved Terminator franchise didn't set the world on fire.
11:35But he's largely made wise decisions, including pivoting to streaming during the pandemic.
11:40So when it became known that Paramount was searching for buyers, David, who had that
11:45long history with the company, was waiting in the wings.
11:48He and investors announced an $8 billion deal that would give David the Paramount CEO spot,
11:53and depending on when this launches, it may have already gone through.
11:57But investor is key, because at 77.5%, Larry Ellison would actually be the single biggest
12:03shareholder in the new company.
12:05Accordingly, a filing by Skydance with the FCC would give Larry CBS's broadcast license.
12:11Everyone is still trying to figure out what this all means.
12:14Give us some sense as to where you really see the numbers adding up.
12:17Given David's taste, it'll probably mean more big, loud, and feel-good popcorn spectacles,
12:22although that might rankle fans of Paramount's golden years.
12:25But remember that the Ellisons made their money in tech.
12:28Media and analysts have framed them as tech people, not entertainment, and they've leaned
12:32into it.
12:33We believe to meet this moment that technology and content need to work seamlessly together.
12:40And what might be pertinent for folks in the industry who just finished striking over this
12:44is the Ellison's stance on AI.
12:46In some investor documents, David has touted artificial intelligence as something that
12:50would turbocharge content creation.
12:53Although Larry hasn't weighed in directly thus far, he's certainly pro-AI, even gleefully
12:58imagining an AI-policed world that sounds like something out of Minority Report.
13:03Citizens will be on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting everything
13:08that's going on.
13:09The real question though is what happens if David fails?
13:12Will Larry step in to protect his investments like he did at Annapurna?
13:17Will he dictate policy, whether tech-related or otherwise?
13:20After all, Larry retired from his job as Oracle's CEO in 2014, but stayed on as CTO and Chairman
13:27of the Board.
13:29Even at 80, it's hard to believe he'll relax.
13:32It'd seem that the family is aware of the optics.
13:35Halfway through reporting, Skydance amended FCC filings to show that David now legally
13:40controls all of the Ellison's voting shares instead of Larry.
13:43Still, it's an interesting question.
13:46What happens when the world's most enigmatic tech billionaire is the power behind the throne?
13:51Can his kids step in to shape it in their own vision, or is that destined to fail?