The announcement of the Skydance C-suite earlier today didn’t reveal who would run the international piece of the new company puzzle.

Paramount’s Kevin MacLellan and Warner Bros. Discovery’s (WBD) Gerhard Zeiler are the likeliest candidates to take the post, given that they’re the heads of international at their respective companies. No other names have emerged over recent days and weeks. We hear an announcement is expected in the coming days, possibly alongside the next batch of executives to be announced.

MacLellan, who has a strong relationship with Skydance co-CEO David Ellison, appears the likeliest to take the top international post right now. This is primarily down to his role at Paramount and questions over Zeiler’s future.

In recent weeks, Austrian national Zeiler has given interviews in his home country saying he would like to become the new leader of the center-left Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPO). SPO leader Andreas Babler has said in recent days he will step down early next year due to pressure and declining polling, ramping up speculation that Zeiler will seek to step into the fray.

“I believe I am the right person to lead the party out of this historic low,” Zeiler was quoted as saying to the Austrian press in an interview.

Zeiler has kept a foot in the political space over the past decade, once trying to become SPO chairman. It looks like he could now try again, and his time with Warners therefore could come to an end.

“Gerhard feels like a bellwether of the future of the international business,” was how one WBD international staffer summed things up.

The 71-year-old Zeiler is one of the true survivors of the various incarnations of Warner Bros. over the past 14 years.

He had joined as one of Europe’s top C-suite execs from Germany’s RTL Group, where he was CEO, initially taking over Turner Broadcasting System’s (TBS) international arm during the Time Warner era.

When A&T acquired Time Warner and renamed it WarnerMedia, he remained at the top of TBS’s international tree, and was then handed a wider role in charge of all WarnerMedia businesses outside of the States. He was an early player in the HBO Max rollout and remained in his role after Discovery took over Warner Bros. in 2022.

MacLellan, meanwhile, has worked in media and entertainment for more than 25 years. He served as NBCUniversal’s international TV boss between 2011 and 2013 before rising to global distribution chief, a post he held for seven years before exiting in 2020.

He then jumped into real estate, construction and managing residential properties in North Carolina, before he was named as President of International and Global Content Distribution at Paramount on the same day Skydance bought the studio in 2025. Given his close ties to Ellison and Zeiler’s potential future in European politics, he looks well set to be named Skydance’s international boss when that is announced.

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