English Entertainment
‘Lost’ producer Abrams leaves Disney for Warner, Paramount
MUMBAI: With one of the biggest television shows in the US Lost under his belt J.J. Abrams is hot property. The man who also directed Mission Impossible 3 has signed a five-year film deal with Paramount Pictures and a six-year TV contract with Warner Bros.
Together, they are worth more than $55 million.
With this, Abrams leaves Disney’s Touchstone. ABC later this year will unveil three Abrams-produced shows. Media reports indicate that he had been there for seven years making many shows.
However what made the difference was the fact that Disney was firm on the fact that revenue from his current shows would be included in the amount of money it would have guaranteed him each year under a new deal.
Reports add that if Abrams’ shows for Warner are successful the sky is the limit. He will get around 35 per cent of the backend. This means revenues from syndication, DVDs, net downloads etc. His production firm is called Brad Robot.
Abrams will get around $five million for directing a Star Trek film for Paramount and he will get some backend, should the film make a tidy profit. He is said to be keen to make films that cost less than $25 million as there are important stories that can be told.
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.
