English Entertainment
Discovery sees ‘Dragons’ taking ratings flight
Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real, which aired on Discovery Channel earlier this month, has garnered high viewership. |
Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real received higher viewership than Star Movies, HBO and MTV, all news channels and even general entertainment channels like Star One, Sab and Sahara One.
Dragons garnered 32 per cent channel share in CS4+ and 39 per cent in AB15+ as per Tam data for week 32, Sunday, 8 pm to 10 pm, CS4+, All India market. This was also more than 60 per cent ahead of Star Movies and almost twice that of HBO, the release states.
The highest rated show in the week amongst the international channels, it recorded higher viewership than many programmes and movies across other channels including Mummy Returns and Home Alone 3 on Star Movies, MTV Khamosh, MTV Mobbed, Keen on KANK on NDTV 24×7. (Source Tam: 07:00-23:59, Week 32, CS 4+, All India).
Discovery Channel has staked its claim to the number one position in the last eight weeks amongst all international channels taking into account all viewers and all day across India. (Tam: CS 4+, All India, Week 25-32, 07:00- 23:59 hours)
Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real aired on Sunday, 6 August at 8 pm.
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.
