Travis Scott has signed a first-look deal at Paramount Pictures through his company Cactus Jack
The pact spans film and TV productions, theater and other experiential work
Paramount executives frame the move as part of a studio push to draw younger audiences back to theaters
Travis Scott has signed his first-look deal at Paramount Pictures, formalizing a Hollywood expansion for his company Cactus Jack. The agreement gives the rapper the freedom to develop projects spanning film and television productions, theater and other experiential endeavors, positioning him for the next stage of a deliberate push to become a big-screen power player.
His latest interview with Variety reveals that the deal deepens a relationship that was already in motion. Cactus Jack had previously partnered with Paramount on consumer products, and their limited-edition SpongeBob SquarePants and Scream apparel drops sold out almost instantly. This new pact widens that footprint from merchandise into full-scale content, tapping the same global cultural influence Scott has built across a decade of collaborations. Paramount co-chair Josh Greenstein credits Scott’s instincts directly: “His taste level moves culture. How many people can you say that about?”
The signing also arrives at a telling moment for Paramount, which is shaping a new chapter built in part on attracting younger audiences to movie theaters. Few artists connect with a fanbase the way Scott does, and the studio is betting that pull translates from arenas to auditoriums. Scott and Greenstein bonded over The Warriors when they first met to discuss expanding the brand’s imprint at the studio, alongside Cactus Jack manager and GM David Stromberg, and Paramount teased the evolving relationship in a Tom Cruise-narrated reel that debuted at CinemaCon earlier this year.
For Scott, the move formalizes an idea he has circled for years, that music and film occupy the same creative space. He traces the ambition back to his own production spending, explaining that he “was spending so much on music videos that they were like independent film budgets,” which pushed him to find a better use for that scale. The question that followed became the thesis for the whole venture: “How can we take long-lasting ideas and structure to make them better than those three to four minutes?” His pitch for the partnership is just as direct, telling Variety he wants to “bring back amazing films, pictures and just creative good ideas,” while praising a studio that is “not scared to make good ideas.”
Scott, who just appeared in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, has no slate of projects in development yet, though he has already floated the kind of storytelling he wants to chase. He describes a lane of slow-burn suspense over conventional scares, noting that “scary movies aren’t scary anymore; they’re exciting dramas” defined by buildup, sharp writing and casting audiences may not recognize. His enthusiasm ultimately circles back to a conviction about the theatrical experience itself, one he frames as a communal act worth protecting. “It’s cool to have the streaming and all, but keep movie theaters alive,” he says, arguing that the craft of sound design is meant to be absorbed on a big screen rather than a couch. That belief, more than any single project, is what he suggests makes Paramount the right home for what comes next.
