English Entertainment
BSMA picks up 7.5 per cent in Adlabs
MUMBAI: Adlabs Films’ promoters have diluted 7.5 per cent stake through preferential allotment of equity shares to international equity placement firm BSMA, an affiliate of Bear Stearns Asia, for $6 million.
The allotment was made at Rs 150 a share, the company informed the Bombay Stock Exchange.
Adlabs Films chairman Manmohan Shetty had told Indiantelevision.com on 18 April that the company was planning to raise Rs 400-500 million. The current placement to BSMA is seen as the first tranche of fund raising effort from Adlabs which is planning to set up seven multiplexes for this year.
Manmohan Shetty and Vasanji Mamania founded the entertainment company. Adlabs deals in distribution of movies and also in the exhibition segments. The company has also ventured into the entertainment sector by bringing IMAX Dome theatre as well as a cinema multiplex to the country.
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.
