English Entertainment
India gets its own ‘Saturday Night Live’, but on Sundays
MUMBAI: Riding on the success of last year’s April Fool’s spoof-show, Comedy Central has decided to bring back the three popular stand-up comedians, Suresh Menon, Anu Menon and Jose Covaco, who have teamed up to make Fools Month. Produced entirely in English, Fool’s Month is topical and looks at the current social-political situation in a lighter vein.
“This is just one initiative of the many we will be undertaking this year to strengthen our local content offering, bringing to viewers not only the best of international but also local comedy,” reveals Viacom18 Media, senior VP & GM – English entertainment, Ferzad Palia.
This four-part television event series will be airing on Sunday nights at 9:00 pm and first aired on 6 April.
All four episodes have been canned, with special vignettes like Joke Pal Bill Me, The Weather Report, TechNo and The RRS that the viewers can look forward to, have also been shot.
According to Palia, these vignettes will be aired on Comedy Central across the week on the channel throughout the following week. “The show can be enjoyed by all age groups interested in looking at the lighter side of political affairs. I am confident that both fresh and loyal viewers will tune in and enjoy a healthy laugh!” says Palia about the TG for the show.
Rather reminiscent of the long-running American late-night live television sketch comedy, Saturday Night Live (also airs on Comedy Central); Fool’s Month is spearheaded by three of India’s popular comedians, Jose Covaco, Suresh Menon and Anu Menon.
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.
