English Entertainment
Ghost Rider ” checks in at the #1 spot at the U.S Box-office. set to storm Indian theatres on February 23, 2007.
MUMBAI: Mark Steven Johnson’s Ghost Rider™ starring Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes, raked in $44.5M on its opening weekend (Friday 16th Feb – Sunday 18th Feb) at the North American box-office . Averaging a scorching $12,296 from 3,619 locations, the film which is based on the popular Marvel Comics character , opened higher than the $35.1M bow of National Treasure, Cage’s previous best opening.
The visual effects-driven Ghost Rider ™ notched up one-third of all ticket sales for the weekend gone by and delivered Hollywood’s biggest opening for 2007.
Ghost Rider™ opens across India on February 23rd, 2007 with over 200 prints and will be dubbed in Hindi (“Mahakaal”) , Tamil and Telugu. This is Hollywood’s first wide release in India in 2007.
From Marvel Comics, creators of Spider-Man™, Fantastic Four, and X-Men, comes a new hero… Ghost Rider™. Long ago, superstar motorcycle stunt rider Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) made a deal with the devil to protect the ones he loved most: his father and his childhood sweetheart, Roxanne (Eva Mendes).
Now, the Devil has come for his due. By day, Johnny is a die-hard stunt rider… but at night, he becomes the Ghost Rider, a bounty hunter of rogue demons. Forced to do the Devil’s bidding, Johnny is determined to confront his fate and use his curse and powers to defend the innocent.
Ghost Rider™ stars Nicolas Cage (National Treasure, Gone in 60 Seconds), Eva Mendes ( 2 Fast 2 Furious, Hitch), Wes Bentley (American Beauty), Sam Elliott (Hulk), Donal Logue ( Blade) and Peter Fonda (The Limey, Easy Rider).
English Entertainment
Ellison takes his Paramount-Warner Bros case straight to theater owners
The Skydance chief goes to CinemaCon with promises and a skeptical crowd waiting
CALIFORNIA: David Ellison strode into a room packed with thousands of cinema owners and executives at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Thursday and did something rather bold: he looked them in the eye and asked them to trust him.
The chief executive of Paramount Skydance vowed that his company would release a minimum of 30 films a year if regulators greenlight its proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, a deal that has made theater owners deeply, and loudly, nervous.
“I wanted to look every single one of you in the eye and give you my word,” Ellison told the crowd. “Once we combine with Warner Bros, we are going to make a minimum of 30 films annually across both studios.”
It was a confident pitch. Whether it landed is another matter. Cinema operators have already called on regulators to block the deal, and scepticism in the room was hardly concealed.
Ellison pushed back by pointing to recent form. Paramount, born from the merger of Paramount Global and Skydance Media last August, plans to release 15 films this year, nearly double the eight it put out in 2025. Progress, he argued, was already underway.
He also threw theater owners a bone they have long been chasing: all films, he pledged, would run exclusively in cinemas for a minimum of 45 days, drawing applause from a crowd that has spent years fighting for exactly that commitment across the industry.
“People can speculate all they want,” Ellison said, “but I am standing here today telling you personally that you can count on our complete commitment. And we’ll show you we mean it.”
Fine words. The regulators, however, will have the last one.
