Leaked audio: What David Ellison told employees at the first-ever Skydance town hall

• David Ellison addressed Skydance employees for the first time at a companywide town hall.
• The Paramount-WBD merger closed on Tuesday.
• "This is an incredibly exciting day," Ellison told staffers.

Skydance CEO David Ellison welcomed Warner Bros. Discovery employees and thanked Paramount staffers for their patience at the combined company's first-ever town hall.

"This is an incredibly exciting day," Ellison said at an employee-only meeting, according to a recording obtained by Business Insider. "I want to start with the most important thing I can say to all of you: Thank you."

Ellison addressed workers at 1 p.m. ET, hours after sending a companywide memo announcing that the $110 billion Paramount-WBD merger had closed. Bruno Mars' hit song "I Just Might" played in the moments before Ellison took the stage.

"It is humbling to be in this room," Ellison said at the start of his remarks.

He then reflected on Paramount's long journey toward buying WBD.

"Let me be honest: It was not easy to get here. At times, it was downright ugly," Ellison said, before adding that he'd "do it all over again in a heartbeat."

The Skydance CEO, along with co-CEO Ynon Kreiz, unveiled the company's four top priorities in a Tuesday memo: win in storytelling, become the most technologically capable media company, lead in a crowded market, and earn trust every day.

Skydance has a wide array of media assets, including the Warner Bros. studio and Paramount Pictures; streamers HBO Max, Paramount+, Pluto TV, and Discovery+; and TV channels CBS, CNN, HBO, HGTV, TLC, and Discovery Channel.

The combined company has the scale and firepower to "go toe to toe with the biggest competitors," Ellison said, though he emphasized that size isn't everything.

"We didn't do this deal simply to get bigger," Ellison said.

Kreiz is tasked with managing the merger integration and running day-to-day operations, while Ellison will form Skydance's creative and tech strategies.

Before the merger, Paramount and WBD staffers said they were uneasy about cross-company competition as the two media powers joined forces, a move Ellison has told investors will lead to $6 billion in cost cuts. The company has said that layoffs won't be the source of most of the savings.