English Entertainment
Hallmark’s ‘The Guardian’ honoured at the Family Television Awards
MUMBAI: The critically acclaimed The Guardian has added another feather to its cap.
The series, which airs Sundays in India on the Hallmark Channel, was honoured last week as best new series at the Family Television Awards in the US. Simon Baker who plays a corporate lawyer’s efforts at protecting children was also honoured as best actor.
Produced by Columbia TriStar Television in association with CBS Productions, The Guardian was created and written by David Hollander, previously a playwright and screenwriter. Hollander, who was inspired by his brother’s experience working in child welfare, also serves as an executive producer along with Mark Johnson and Michael Pressman.
Also recognised was the CBS TV movie The Rosa Parks Story which will premiere on Hallmark. The awards, in their fourth year, were initiated by the Family Friendly Programming Forum. The group was formed by more than 40 advertisers in the USA to encourage the production of programmes aimed at parents and children.
Tom Bergeron, the Emmy Award winning host of Hollywood Squares and America’s Funniest Home Videos, hosted the event.
A highlight of the ceremony was the sister trio SHeDAISY singing Mine All Mine from their recently released third album, Knock on the Sky. Dick Clark productions produced the Family Television Awards show for the fourth consecutive year. The ceremony is scheduled to air 9 August on ABC networks in the USA.
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.
