English Entertainment
MGM Channel to launch in Spain
MUMBAI: MGM Networks and Media Park have announced an agreement to launch and distribute a localised MGM channel to subscribers across Spain.
In India MGM has a joint venture with Zee TV.
With this deal, MGM Networks now has channel interests in 110 countries. It has managed to more than quadruple its worldwide holdings over the past three years.
In Spain the channel will be dubbed into Castilian Spanish. To further enhance Media Park’s current offering of seven channels to Spanish multi-channel subscribers, MGM Networks and Media Park will re-launch and re-brand Media Park’s existing “canalstar” channel as the MGM Channel.
The Channel will transmit from Media Park’s facilities in Barcelona. It will dip into MGM’s 4,000 title library.
Media Park is an independent Spanish audiovisual company. It specialises in the production and commercialisation of content for digital television
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.
