English Entertainment
News Corp cancels OJ Simpson book, TV special
MUMBAI: As a result of pressure from different quarters US media conglomerate News Corporation Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch has announced that the company has cancelled publication of the book If I Did It as well as the special which was to air on Fox.
This was to have featured O.J. Simpson. In 1995 Simpson was acquitted of the murders of his wife and another man in 1995. The cancelled project was to have had him talk about how he would have done the murders.
Murdoch said, “I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project. We are sorry for any pain this has caused the families of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown-Simpson.”
Besides the victims’ families opposition came from viewers, station affiliates, advertisers, booksellers and even executives within the company. Reports state that over a dozen of Fox’s roughly 200 affiliates across the US had rejected the show and News Corp had received indications that more were likely to follow.
Simpson was acquitted of murder charges in 1995, but a civil court found him liable for their deaths in 1997 and ordered him to pay $33.5 million in damages.
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.
