English Entertainment
AXN goes down the sci-fi route with ‘The 4400’
MUMBAI: With its tight fist focus on action, AXN will now try contemplate the sci-fi genre to gauge if it can help the channel to generate edge over competition. The broadcaster will air the show The 4400 every Tuesday at 10 pm from 1 February.
The title refers to the number of missing people who suddenly resurface. Some have been missing for 60 years, yet they are not a day older when they disappeared.
The 4400 seem to be completely unaware what has happened to them in the intervening years. The US government tries its level best to figure it out.
The rest of humanity is less amazed by the strange phenomena and more deeply worried by this bizarre reappearance. When it turns out that some of the 4400 have also developed unusual gifts, tabloid journalists see in the 4400 convenient scapegoats.
When they are released from quarantine, the anonymity they have been granted now seems paper thin when many already bear a seething hatred for them.
It may be recalled that a couple of years ago Star Movies had aired the science fiction show Taken. That show had woven together the stories of three families over multiple generations and their crucial role in the history of alien abductions. While Taken fared well in Taiwan it however drew a lukewarm response in India despite a multimedia campaign.
It remains to be seen as to the kind of response AXN’s new initiative receives.
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.
