April 23 (Reuters) - David Ellison, 41, would not be the

first rich guy to arrive in Hollywood with a fat bank account

and dreams of making movies, though the son of billionaire

Oracle founder Larry Ellison boasts the rarest of attributes for

a budding media mogul: a Silicon Valley pedigree.

In an industry where many get their start fetching coffee or

moving props, Ellison spent summers writing computer code for

his father's software company and getting insights on the movie

business from Pixar Animation Studios co-founder Steve Jobs.

Those geek sensibilities will come in handy if he succeeds in

his bid to take over Paramount Global ( PARAA ), a storied studio whose

fortunes have been upended by technological change.

Ellison is orchestrating a multi-step transaction that would

result in the merger of his independent studio, Skydance Media,

with Paramount. Skydance entered into a 30-day exclusive

negotiation with a special committee of the Paramount board,

though as with any talks, a deal is not assured.

If Paramount's board recommends the merger, it would present

an opportunity for Ellison to revitalize the venerable studio,

whose library of 1,000 films includes classics like "Star Trek,"

"The Godfather" and "Indiana Jones," and whose television assets

include broadcaster CBS and cable networks MTV and Nickelodeon.

Ellison would likely restructure the company to deliver the

highest-quality content and recalibrate the Paramount+ streaming

service in a way that differentiates it from its rivals,

according to one person familiar with Skydance's strategy.

"One of the things that people are under-estimating ... is

his sense of tech, compared to some of the other guys, ... maybe

with his father's help or just his upbringing," said Endeavor

CEO Ari Emanuel. "What they do with Paramount+ and all that

other stuff I think will be refreshing."

Skydance also is seeking to buy National Amusements, the

Redstone family's holding company, which owns 77% of Paramount's

class-A voting stock. That deal is contingent upon Paramount

agreeing to acquire Skydance in an all-stock transaction valued

at $5 billion.

Ellison demonstrated an appetite for risk-taking from an

early age, learning to fly when he was 13 with his father, who

took lessons with him. By the age of 16, David Ellison was

flying an Extra 300, a high-performance aerobatic plane.

The studio's name takes its inspiration from Ellison's love

of stunt flying, also known as "skydancing."

Ellison and his sister, Megan, were raised by their mother,

Barbara Boothe, who instilled in them a strong work ethic (they

received a $5 weekly allowance for performing chores) and a love

of film. Every weekend, they watched movies, he has told people.

Ellison enrolled in Pepperdine University to study business,

but transferred to the University of California's film school. A

GQ magazine profile of Ellison in 2015 noted that sister Megan

served as a boom operator on her brother's senior-thesis movie.

In 2011, she founded her own studio, Annapurna Pictures, which

backed such Oscar-nominated films as "Zero Dark Thirty" and

"American Hustle."

In 2006, Ellison dropped out of school to finance "Flyboys,"

a World War I movie about fighter pilots starring James Franco

and Ellison. The film flopped and another project, "Northern

Lights," failed to take flight.

Ellison then sought another tack. Skydance struck a

four-year deal with Paramount Pictures that led to Ellison's

first success, the Coen brothers' 2010 remake of the western

"True Grit," which garnered 10 Oscar nominations. Other box

office triumphs have followed, including "World War Z," "Star

Trek," a trio of "Mission: Impossible" films and "Top Gun:

Maverick."

Bryan Lourd, co-chairman and chief executive of the Creative

Artists Agency, said Ellison is detail-oriented and an advocate

for projects, both creatively and in terms of deal structure.

Because Ellison worked on these big projects early in his

career, he had the opportunity to learn from the best.

If Ellison lands the deal, he will be "an owner-operator

that actually loves film and television and stories, and that is

needed now more than ever," Lourd said.

Skydance studio has grown with Ellison's ambitions. The

studio now employs 1,300 people and is on track to deliver six

live-action feature films, 10 television series and plus two

animated movies over the next year.

In 2016, Skydance acquired The Workshop Entertainment to

launch a game group, Skydance Interactive. In 2017 Skydance

launched an animation division, now led by former Pixar creative

chief John Lasseter. It expanded into sports-related scripted

series and documentaries in 2021, forming partnerships with the

National Football League, Tom Brady's Religion of Sports and

John Skipper's Meadowlark Media.

Skydance is backed by investments from the Ellison family,

RedBird Capital Partners, KKR, Chinese internet giant Tencent,

and Korean powerhouse CJ ENM and its entertainment subsidiary,

Studio Dragon.