Illustration by Peter Oumanski

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Hollywood really is a larger-than-life version of corporate America, especially in the C-suite. Across all U.S. industries, median CEO pay hit $29.4 million in 2025, data firm Equilar finds. But for top entertainment execs, that’s on the low end, per The Hollywood Reporter’s annual look at the highest-paid media chiefs. Many of the moguls on our list made around $50 million. Or much more.

Not only that, but the employee-to-CEO pay ratio is higher in entertainment. Across all industries, 341 employee salaries equal one CEO’s take-home pay. That median is far exceeded at most of the major Hollywood companies tracked for this list (think 805-to-1 for former Disney chief Bob Iger). “Large stock awards drive much of this elevated pay,” Equilar exec Amit Batish notes.

Leading the way is David Zaslav, who took Warner Bros. Discovery from $9 a share to sell in a bidding war to David Ellison’s Paramount for $31 a share. His pay last year, $165 million, was only trounced by his 2021 package of $246.6 million, driven by a $202 million stock option grant related to a contract extension and the WarnerMedia merger. And both of those years are far outweighed by his golden parachute — which may total between $550 million and $887 million, depending on the value of stock options and when the megadeal closes. (In a non-binding vote on April 23, 82 percent of WBD shareholders rejected Zaslav’s parachute.)

“A golden parachute itself is not necessarily unusual, but this size is unheard of,” Jun Frank, head of compensation & governance services at ISS-Corporate. “Many of these exit packages can be quite controversial because it’s a really big sum,” adding, “and certain provisions, such as last-minute sweeteners, tend to trigger more concern.”

Just look at one of the newest captains of entertainment industry, Paramount CEO David Ellison, whose Skydance closed the acquisition of the venerable Hollywood company in August. That megadeal helped him collect a huge pay package worth more than $60 million last year, even if mostly in stock awards that vest over five years, beaming him up into the top ranks of sector paydays.

Comcast honcho Michael Cavanagh’s ascent also continued, with his $70 million-topping package putting him into the upper echelon of the annual entertainment industry top executive compensation list for 2025.

The lion’s share of Cavanagh’s pay came, just like in the case of Ellison, in the form of stock awards, a big portion of them being tied to his promotion in December to the co-CEO role, which he started this year. Such stock awards are based on the fair value price on the grant date, so they may end up being worth far less or more, depending on where the stock price goes.

“Executive pay has been on the rise throughout corporate America,” notes Chris Crawford, managing director, executive compensation, at consulting firm Gallagher. “Whether it is going through volatility, whether it is mergers, which are happening across entertainment right now – those factors will drive larger one-time packages,” including for newly hired, promoted or exiting managers.

ISS-Corporate Media & Entertainment, a unit of proxy advisory Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), also crunched some of the early pay data for the past year, focusing on 318 companies listed on the broad-based S&P 500 stock index, at which the CEO was in the same role for the previous filing years. Companies in the media & entertainment sector that fit this criteria saw the most drastic increase in CEO compensation, with a median rise of 117 percent, while their median total shareholder return, a metric looking at stock price and dividends, was down 28.6 percent.

Lawrence Cunningham, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance, told THR: “Media comp has tended to be higher than corporate America’s medians for various reasons, including industry flash that elevates creativity and persona alongside the primary CEO skills, such as capital allocation, management and leadership.”

CEO pay ratios at some Hollywood giants are also above broader trends in corporate America. The ratios are calculated by comparing the pay of a company’s CEO with that of a median employee. Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol found out that the devil is in these kinds of details when the coffee chain disclosed that he made 6,666 times more than the median staffer in 2024. Hollywood isn’t quite dealing with those kinds of beasts. However, among Equilar 100 companies, the CEO pay ratio rose to 341:1 in

Hollywood CEO Pay Chart: Top Executives Compensation in 2025