English Entertainment
CCTV set to launch business reality series ‘Win in China’
MUMBAI: Looks like it is the season for business-oriented reality format shows. Soon after Zee TV launching Business Baazigar — a distant cousin of the popular business reality show The Apprentice — in India, China’s national television network CCTV has announced its plans to launch a reality series on the similar lines
Set for a May 2006 launch, the series Win in China will offer would-be Chinese entrepreneurs from around the world a chance to become bosses of new businesses. According to its producers, participants in the eight-month show will face rigorous tests of their tenacity, business acumen and street savvy.
About 110 competitors will gather in Beijing for the preliminary contest after being chosen from among 3,000. Twelve participants will enter the semi-final, adjudicated by judges including academic experts and successful entrepreneurs. One competitor will be eliminated in each episode until five remain.
The winner will run a new business with a registered capital of no less than 10 million yuan (US$1.2 million); the runner-up, 7 million yuan (US$863,000); and other three, 5 million yuan (US$617,000).
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.
