English Entertainment
‘Desperate Housewives’ to air in China
MUMBAI: After casting a spell on audiences across the globe Desperate Housewives will travel to China. A licensing deal has been done between Buena Vista International Television—Asia Pacific and Zone Vision Networks.
The series will air on the Everyday Jiayi block on CCTV-8, which Zone Vision operates through Encore International Beijing. Airing nightly, the block showcases international drama and feature films. This is the first programming acquisition made for Everyday Jiayi since Zone Vision Networks took over the operations of Encore International Beijing.
Zone Vision’s chairman, Chris Wronski says, “As a part of our commitment to our relationship with CCTV and our viewers in China, we have made it a priority to acquire more notable Hollywood series and award-winning programming from around the world. Certainly, Desperate Housewives is an excellent first step in that direction. We will continue to seek out programming properties that will be exciting and appropriate for this audience, as well as further enhance the Jiayi brand.”
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.
