English Entertainment
‘Manasarovar’ selected to Indian Panorama & London film fest
MUMBAI: Debutant director Anup Kurian’s Manasarovar has been selected to the prestigious feature film section of the Indian Panorama of International Film Festival of India (IFFI) to be held in Goa from 29 November – 9 December 2004.
Manasarovar will be the opening film of the feature film section.
‘Manasarovar’ director Anup Kurian
The Indian English film, produced on a budget of Rs 2.5 million, has also been chosen for the London Film Festival to be held from 20 October – 5 November.
The 90-minute film, produced by Chicago-based Visual Possibility Inc., is the first feature film for most of its crew, many of them Kurian’s 1998 batch-mates from FTII.
Manasarovar had won the prestigious Aravindan Puraskaram for the best debut director in May 2004 by a jury headed by renowned filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan. In August 2004, a jury headed by noted actor, director and producer Kamalhassan selected the film for the annual Gollapudi Srinivas award. The film won over the year’s mega debutant hits like Kal Ho Na Ho, Haasil and Munnabhai MBBS, among others, states an official release.
The movie features national Award-winning actor Atul Kulkarni, Neha Dubey and Zafar Karachiwala in lead roles. Shot extensively in Maharashtra, Kerala and Himachal Pradesh, Manasarovar takes you across the rugged landscapes of the Deccan Plateau, greenery of Kerala and the serenity of Dharamsala.
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.
