English Entertainment
Fox puts select archives on auction for Motion Picture and Television Fund in the US
MUMBAI: The Motoion Picture and Television Fund (MPTF) in the US has announced that Twentieth Century Fox has culled its archives and donated more than 200 rare documents including signed contracts and internal memos to be sold at an auction to benefit the Fund.
Items in the auction represent dealings with over 50 Hollywood legends including: Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn and Elvis Presley. Films involvef include Seven Year Itch, Miracle on 34th Street, The King and I, All About Eve and Love Me Tender.
The auction called From the Twentieth Century Fox Archives: Documents from the Golden Age of Hollywood, will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue available at www.swanngalleries.com.
The auction, scheduled for 25 January, 2007, will be conducted by Swann Auction Galleries in New York City. Proceeds from the sale will directly benefit the MPTF insurance fund that provides health insurance for actors.
Fox Filmed Entertainment chairman and CEO Tom Rothman says, “Fox’s heritage reflects Hollywood itself and our well maintained document archives are a Tut’s Tomb of movie history. These papers are so cool that, as a fan of that history, I will have to restrain myself from bidding on each item. This donation is intended to get the past out of file cabinets into the hands of film lovers and let it serve the present through the MPTF. We also hope this auction might inspire other studios to follow suit.”
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.
