English Entertainment
Experiential & gaming zones, animated & online events mark Comics Convention
MUMBAI: Alto Bengaluru Comic Con saw a huge turnout of fans cosplaying along with Special Guest appearances, amazing fans experiences and awesome sessions! Comic Con India hosted city’s biggest pop culture event over the weekend at KTPO Convention Centre. The show hosted a spectacular lineup of events including special international guest appearances, exclusive experiential & gaming zones, artist alley, fans sessions, cosplay, book launches and much more.
“It was yet another exciting year in Bangalore, the fans were amazing!, shared Comic Con India founder Jatin Varma. Famous international personalities like Todd Nauck, Artist, Amazing Spider-Man, Teen Titans Go, Dr. Who, Nightcrawler; Joe Harris, Author, X-Files Comics & Jim Demonakos, Founder Seattle’s annual Emerald City Comicon, author of The Silence of Our Friends attended and took special sessions at BCC 2016.
Maruti Suzuki was not only the presenting sponsor for the show, but also set up the biggest Art & Gaming zone ever at a Comic Con show.
Cosplay (Costume Contest), another major attraction at Comic Con India, continued to give prizes to people in great costumes. Comic Con India had created 5 categories to increase one’s chances of winning gifts. Each day, one winner was chosen from each of the five categories:-1. Comic book/graphic novel 2. Animated Series/Movie 3. Manga/Anime 4. Sci-Fi/Fantasy and 5. Gaming. 5 Cool Cosplayers got a voucher of Rs 2500 (each) for their Spirit of Cosplay.
Also, both days, One lucky winner out of the chosen 5 won INR 50,000 (Cash Prize)! And a chance to enter ‘Indian Championships of Cosplay’. The Winner of ‘Indian Championships of Cosplay’ will compete and represent the country at the Annual Crown Championships of Cosplay at Chicago Comics & Entertainment Expo!
Comic Con India’s partners set up Exclusive Experiential and Gaming Zones at the event. It featured two awesome gaming Zones. Nodwin ESL Gaming Zone & Amazon Battlefield One & FIFA 17 Zone. Amazon Battlefield One & FIFA 17 Zone hosted a slew of gaming activities.
Nodwin ESL Gaming Zone hosted ESL India Premiership, which was a mix of online and offline tournaments, monumental prize pool, daily content, celebrity showdowns, cosplay competition and many more. Fans were part of the second leg of the offline tournaments of the ESL India Premiership, where the champions of last three Starter Cups competed on a bigger stage, for more prize money and larger audience. These champions will battle it out in the Masters which is the season finale event to take place in December at Alto Delhi Comic Con 2016.
One of the other main attractions of the event were the Baahubali Zone & first of its kind Wand Master Training Booth (By Warner Bros). At the Bahubali Zone, the team from the super hit Franchise showcased their “Transgenic Content” for fans at the show. At the Wand Master Training Booth, people learnt to use wands to create official spells and got the video of their experience too.
Not just that, other exclusive Experiential Zone at the event included AXN Zone. It had lots of fun engagements. Fans got to witness some of their favorite characters like Sam & Dean, Sherlock, Heisenberg, Dexter etc come alive.
An “Artist Alley” exclusively featuring artists from all over India and Bengaluru was set up at BCC 2016. Here fans got an opportunity to interact with awesome artists, illustrators, designers working for comics and related fields. The alley featured artists like Saumin Suresh Patel, Reshmi Chandrashekhar, Prasad Bhatt, Rajeev Tamhankar, Nikita Das Gupta, Leena Swamy, Ayan Nag, Varsha Kodgi, Milanpreet, Madhuvanthi Mohan and many more.
Well known creators like Akshay Dhar from Meta Desi Comics, Vivek Goel from Holy Cow Entertainment and Shamik Dasgupta from Yali Dreams were there too! For the sheer love for Comics, 13 new Comic Book titles got launched at the convention.
The launches were, Doc M by Kalapani Comics, Durga: Legends by Vimanika Comics, Space Junkies by S K Comics, Rumi Volume 2 by Sufi Comics, Karma & 13 Days by TBS Planet, Mallory by Red Streak Publications, The Age of Immortals by Holy Cow Entertainment, Mighty Girl by Graphic India, LoSs4A2 by Kuma, Jataka Manga by ICBM Comics, Sirji Comics – Volume 2 by Sirji
Comics & Rakshak by Yali Dream Creations.
At the convention, fans got to buy merchandise from the best and most exclusive International merchandisers. Also, there were exclusive Indian merchandisers including Planet Superheroes, The Souled Store, Frog, PosterBoy, Greenrock, Macmerise, Bombay Merch, MC Sid Razz, Anime Pop Mall, Wacom, Comic Con India Store, G2A.com and many more.
The main participants at the event were — Harpercollins Publishers India, Campfire Graphic Novel, Viz Media By Simon & Schuster, Graphic India, Vimanika Comics, DC, Darkhorse & Vertigo Comics By Random House India, Dorling Kindersley India, Red Streak Publications, TBS Planet, Sirji Comics, ICBM Comics, Holycow Entertainment, Yali Dream Creations and many more.
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.
