English Entertainment
Monuments Turn Red, As National Geographic Raises an Alarm for Planet Conservation
MUMBAI: Glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, pollution in various parts of the world is at its peak, and tonnes of plastic waste is in the oceans. Given the rate of deterioration of our planet, the future is looking red for life on Earth. This means that humankind will undoubtedly need to find a new home for its survival. In National Geographic’s new season of the acclaimed series MARS, which premiered on Saturday, experts like Elon Musk and former chief scientist of NASA explain how Mars will be that home soon. While the series focusses on how humankind will survive on the new planet, National Geographic is also trying to highlight another important issue connected to this – the subject of preserving our current home, Earth. To raise awareness around the planet’s depleting resources, National Geographic illuminated iconic monuments red on 17th and 18th November, to awaken people with a powerful message – ‘The Future is Red’.
The iconic structures used to spread this important message are some of India’s most visited and photographed monuments, including Worli Sea Link and Gateway of India in Mumbai, The National Museum and Signature Bridge in Delhi. These icons were turned red, followed by the message of ‘The Future is Red’ in the evening over the weekend. In this initiative, the monuments, which represent our heritage, become a moving medium to highlight the message that the future is red for us, unless we take responsibility for our past and present.
Produced by Academy Award winners Ron Howard & Brian Grazer, MARS – dubbed impressive, inspiring and scientifically honest by critics – combines expert opinions from space exploration pioneers with dramatic visualisation to showcase how humans will survive living on Mars, once we colonise the planet. The series highlights how humankind will face similar problems on Mars as it is facing currently on Earth, due to making the same mistakes. It highlights a spectrum of events that are currently compromising life and the environment on Earth: drilling, glacial melting, rising sea level and indigenous health epidemics which surface when the permafrost melts.
Gayatri Yadav, Head-Consumer Strategy and Innovation, Star India said, “With evolving science and technology, humankind has taken tremendous strides towards our next big frontier – the Red Planet. The new season of MARS, gives an in-depth view of how our lives will be on the planet. While our show celebrates humankind’s insatiable spirit of exploration, we also wanted to spread awareness about the fact that we are doomed to have the same fate on any new home, unless we take responsibility for it. National Geographic has always been a powerful voice that awakens people to change, and with this audacious initiative to turn our iconic monuments red, we want to highlight the importance for each and every one of us, to make informed choices to save our planet Earth.”
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.
