English Entertainment
Gomorrah: Beta Film signs deals in Africa and India
MUNICH: The hot-selling Italian mafia series Gomorrah continues its international roll-out. Beta Film has sold the Sky Italia mega-hit to M-Net, the biggest subscription TV network in Africa, where it will be screened from 1 April 2017 on the new foreign language TV series block on M-Net 101, M-Net’s flagship channel.
The South Africa–based, MultiChoice Group-owned TV service has only recently opened up to European productions and will broadcast the show in its original version with English subtitles as well as subtitles in local languages throughout the continent. Gomorrah, sold to the US (Sundance TV) and numerous other territories worldwide, will also travel to India’s DTH television service Tata Sky for its Tata Sky World Series service.
Tata Sky is a joint venture between Tata Sons and 21st Century Fox. The subcontinent is traditionally dominated by a strong local film- and TV industry with difficult conditions for non-English shows.
Sky Italia, Cattleya, Fandango and Beta Film are working on Gomorrah’s third installment, which is currently in post-production.
In addition, Beta Film closed a multi-hour deal with the African telecommunications group Econet for its recently launched Pay TV service Kwesé TV, containing 50 German and French movies and European feature films, among them the Emma Watson thriller Colonia, Berlinale Golden Bear-winning Child’s Pose and The White Masai. All shows will be broadcast in Sub-Saharan Africa in their original language with English subtitles as well as in local languages.
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.
