English Entertainment
AXN to unveil action award winners on Sunday
MUMBAI: One of AXN’s initiatives for the year is the AXN Action Awards. This seeks to reward work done by Bollywood’s action stars. The show which will be hosted by Dino Morea airs on 9 July at 8 pm.
With Bollywood always having action as a part of a formula that is served along with drama and romance, it is only recently that there are blockbuster pure adrenaline racing action movies, a la Hollywood, breaking away from the sugary romances and the family dramas.
Morea will go on the sets of each of the action stars to felicitate them with their new prized possession. The award categories include: Best Action Movie, Best Action Director, Best Action Sequence in a Movie, Best Action Actor and Best Action Actor in a Negative Role
As had been reported earlier by Indiantelevision.com, the channel received over 200,000 votes for different action categories in the first ever Indian Action Awards.
SPE Networks South Asia director of marketing and sales, Rohit Bhandari says, “Indian cinema produces some of the best action heroes in the world. So how could AXN resist helping our viewers to felicitate the brawniest stars of them all? Thums Up and AXN are both brands that symbolize adventure, endurance and extreme challenge. The AXN Action Awards will be a never before seen comprehensive look at the action heroes, the movies and the people behind them!”
The AXN Action Awards is presented by Thums Up with associate sponsorship by Mahindra Scorpio & Sony Ericsson K750i. The retail partner for the event is Inox, the multiplex chain.
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.
