Following a reorganization at Paramount in which Charles Bluhdorn, the chairman and CEO of Gulf & Western Industries, was replaced by Barry Diller, Yablans announced his resignation as president on November 8, 1974.

[8] While Yablans' reorganization of MGM and United Artists (UA) into a single entity (as MGM/UA) served to reduce costs and overhead, the company continued to lose value, and in 1986 was purchased by Ted Turner Productions for a reported $1.25 billion.

[10] In 1986, he set up a two-year, seven-picture agreement with low-budget studio Empire International to produce feature films.

[12] In 2000, Yablans and partners Cindy Bond, Charlie Stuart Gay and Ron Booth founded Promenade Pictures, a production and marketing company committed to "family-friendly" entertainment.

Its most ambitious project was the "Epic Stories of the Bible" series of CGI-animated features, starting with The Ten Commandments (2007) and Noah's Ark: The New Beginning (2012).