English Entertainment
‘Indian Summers’ to commence telecast on PBS
NEW DELHI: PBS will soon commence telecast of the British drama Indian Summers, which had earlier been telecast by Channel 4 in the United Kingdom and won accolades.
The 10-episode British drama set in India in 1932 has been made by Masterpiece and shows the first signs of the end of British rule in India.
According to the story, members of the British ruling class are making their annual holiday retreat to the Himalayan foothills in Shimla where a brash old-school maven Cynthia Coffin (Julie Walters), runs a successful whites-only social club and schemes to advance the career of a snooty diplomat Ralph Whelan (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), hoping to get him named as the next Viceroy.
While this is the main story, there are many subplots including the arrival of Ralph’s mysteriously widowed sister, Alice (Jemima West), and her baby son.
A young Indian clerk Aafrin (Nikesh Patel) not only takes an assassin’s bullet meant for Ralph in the first episode slated for 27 September but also comes across evidence that suggests the attempt was not the revolutionary act it was reported to be.
Julie Walters, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Jemima West, Nikesh Patel, Roshan Seth and Lillete Dubey star in this saga.
Set against the sweeping grandeur of the Himalayas and tea plantations of Northern India, the drama tells the rich and explosive story of the decline of the British Empire and the birth of modern India, from both sides of the experience. But at the heart of the story lie the implications and ramifications of the tangled web of passions, rivalries and clashes that define the lives of those brought together in this summer which will change everything.
Indian Summers is the first Channel 4 commission from New Pictures. It is a co-production with Masterpiece on PBS in the US. It is created and written by Paul Rutman, directed by Anand Tucker and produced by Dan McCulloch. Executive producers are Charlie Pattinson, Elaine Pyke and Simon Curtis, and Rebecca Eaton for Masterpiece on PBS.
Indira Varma is co-executive producer for the series commissioned by Piers Wenger and Beth Willis for Channel 4. Indian Summers is being distributed internationally by All3M International.
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.
