Yon Krause, a fierce CEO who thrives when his back is against the wall

The former motel boss is described as a "bundle of energy" who took a chance on "Barbie". Now 61, Skydance's new CEO is taking on the biggest challenge of his career with $6 billion in cost-cutting on the horizon and a mission to "make investors feel better."

Thursday morning, shortly after 9:30 a.m., Yenn Kreis, David Ellison and the entire senior leadership team at Skydance walked from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in lower Manhattan to a booth run by Citadel Securities, where a large golden bell had been erected.

They were there for the first trade, a ceremony the NYSE holds whenever a publicly traded company rings the opening bell, a moment made for the cameras. Citadel merchant Peter Giacki called the trade. "I have $9 with 519,000 shares!" he shouted, Ellison holding a wooden mallet as he rang the bell as the band burst into applause.

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Then Craze took the mallet and landed a volley on the bell that was so loud that one of the Citadel's traders spun around in shock, and even Wall Street veteran Jerry Cardinal raised his eyebrows.

As anyone who has ever held hands with Kryz will tell you, he shows his strength and acts with power and with little hesitation. Crease is an avid kitesurfer whose post-college job was as a trainer at a fashion club, and is fond of reminiscing about the story of her daughter giving birth in the back of a car in front of London's Paddington station.

As one person put it, he's a "bundle of energy," which seemed to thrive when his (and company's) backs were against the wall. The onslaught of COVID-19, President Trump's tariffs, the risky push to entertain via the Barbie movie. Whenever the stakes were higher, he rose to the occasion and became the leader the moment required, from cutting unemotional costs to pivoting when the business and political winds shifted.

Now he's bringing that energy to some of Hollywood's most prized properties, swapping dolls for DC and board games for backups.

"There are some questions about David leading a company of that size," says a former Warners executive. "Ynon exists to make investors feel better."

According to people who worked with Kreis at Mattel, she was a visionary leader who focused the toy company around individual brands such as Barbie, Hot Wheels and American Girl. One of his first orders was to create an in-house entertainment department. After all, why would Mattel license an IP the size of its toy chest when it could reap some of the financial rewards itself? The business model seemed flawless: take toys with an intrinsic appeal to an audience and make a movie that appeals to that audience, all of which in turn would sell more toys.

At the time, The Lego Movie was a huge success story and spawned a film franchise with spin-off films, series and video games. And Disney made a lot of money from nostalgic remakes of its animated classics Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast.

“We look at Marvel as a very good analogy,” Cries told Time in 2022. “Before Mattel had only released one feature film, it was in full development. This is what we believe we can achieve in terms of the strength, appeal and domestic fan base of our franchises."

The resulting boards were filmmaker-centric, with seemingly crazy pairings of directors and talent like M. Night Shyamalan, Clea DuVall, and Ayo Edebiri with popular toys like the Magic 8 Ball, Polly Pocket, and Barney.

The first project out of the gate happened to focus on Mattel's biggest asset: Barbie. And many people, including the film's top creatives, credit Craze with being the de facto supporter of Greta Gerwig's Margot Robbie movie.

A source says: "The motel board was leery and worried the concept would be too disruptive. But he supported Robbie and she supported Greta." The movie includes the Mattel logo superimposed over profanity and a Mattel executive getting shot with a (fake!) bullet, not to mention Will Ferrell playing the film's villain as a grumpy CEO, all options that could have been closed. "[Ynon] made the company uncomfortable about it," says the source.

"Enon has a great sense of humor, and I think he thinks it's funny," Brenner told THR in 2023. "You're the other one."

"We take our brands very seriously," Cries said of Ferrell's CEO skewering, in a quote that perhaps best encapsulates Crise's unique ability to walk the fine line between the corporate mentality and creativity required as the leader of an entertainment company. We take what we do very seriously. But we don't take ourselves too seriously."

Not all Mattel films have been as successful or critically acclaimed as Barbie. Masters of the Universe was a bomb for Amazon studio MGM this summer, while the new Matchbox movie - out today with Skydance and on Apple TV+ - was panned by critics.

But Barbie proved to be a huge success, grossing more than $1.4 billion at the global box office, a 16 percent jump in the fiscal quarter following the film's release. It was also during the launch of Barbie that the landscape changed in Hollywood as a whole. Barbie premiered in Los Angeles on July 9th, and less than a week later, SAG joined the WGA in their own labor strikes that slowly led directly into our current moment of M&A and consolidation.

As well as leading a company in the Hollywood boom cycle, Crise was quick to act and follow suit in addition to the changing political climate.

Mattel went through several rounds of layoffs throughout 2025 and into 2026, ultimately affecting nearly 300 employees at the company's El Segundo headquarters. Additionally, last year, as the second Trump administration began a federal battle against anything it deemed to fall under the umbrella of diversity, equity and inclusion, Mattel, like larger entertainment companies including Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon, Efforts backfired. The company refrained from disclosing its DEI information to investors and removed any reference to goals and resources aimed at increasing diversity within the company.

It's the tougher moments of leadership that Crease must embrace as he takes over as CEO of Skydance. The ax should come to Skydance soon, although Kearse insisted on Thursday that most of the $6 billion in synergies will not come from staff cuts.

Speaking to CNBC's David Faber on the floor of the NYSE minutes before the bell, Crease said, "When it comes to making these decisions, of course, we think about our people." We will do this in a fair, respectful, transparent manner and communicate our plans. This will be part of the program."