English Entertainment
’24’ returns on Fox in January
MUMBAI: The Rupert Murdoch owned broadcaster Fox has announced that the action charged 24 will return in January in the US for a fourth season of clock-stopping suspense.
On 3 January back to back episodes will air. The series will move to Monday night. In India the show airs on AXN.
What is unique about the show is that it takes place in real time. In season three, Jack Bauer played by Kiefer Sutherland who was in charge of a special field operations unit of the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU), fought to stop a viral terrorism threat before it could kill millions of people.
Season four begins 18 months later with the episode Day 4: 7 am- 8 am. CTU is now headed by Erin Driscoll, a steely government agent who made firing Jack one of her first priorities upon taking over.
After the explosion of a commuter train, Jack, who is now working for Secretary of Defense James Heller and also is romantically involved with his married daughter, Audrey suddenly finds himself heading back to CTU for a meeting with Driscoll on Heller’s behalf.
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.
