International
Paramount and Mario Puzo estate come to terms
MUMBAI: Paramount Pictures and the Mario Puzo estate have compromised on a legal war over a new Mario Puzo estate. The parties informed the court about a deal and stipulated to the dismissal of the litigation.
Though the terms of the agreement have not been disclosed, but it resolves both a claim and counterclaim that were lodged this year in the New York Federal Court.
In February, Paramount had filed a suit alleging that it had a copyright interest in Puzo‘s famed novel The Godfather, and an agreement that granted, "the sole and exclusive right to make and cause to be made literary and dramatic and other versions and adaptations of every kind and character."
The studio had alleged that prior "sequel novels" had tarnished the legacy over the Godfather franchise and that it was promised in writing that there would be no more literary sequels. It wanted confirmation to preclude the release of The Family Corleone, which was to detail Vito Corleone‘s rise to power in Depression-era New York.
In March, the Puzo estate led by attorney Bert Fields responded with its own counterclaims that alleged that Paramount‘s actions had meant it breached a 1967 rights agreement that purportedly expressly excluded and reserved "book publishing rights" for Puzo, who died in 1999.
As a result of the alleged breach, the Puzo estate sought to terminate Paramount‘s rights to The Godfather.
In May, the two sides came to an interim deal to allow The Family Corleone to come out. Money from the book was to be put aside in escrow until the parties reached a conclusion to the litigation.
Paramount scored a big win in the case in September when a federal judge in New York dismissed much of the counterclaims, finding the Puzo estate couldn‘t cancel the contract, nor can it make a rescission. The judge said that assuming Paramount had an obligation not to interfere with book publishing, the estate had failed to adequately establish this obligation goes to the "essence" of the 1969 agreement.
The judge allowed a breach of contract counterclaim to continue, and a trial could have clarified rights under deals made in the 1960s, but the two sides have now put the dispute to sleep.
Paramount was represented by Richard Kendall at Kendall Brill & Klieger.
LOS ANGELES: Acting has never been an easy profession, but in recent years, it has acquired a new existential anxiety. Artificial intelligence can now mimic faces, clone voices and, in theory at least, speak any language it is fed. The fear that actors may soon be replaced by algorithms no longer belongs exclusively to science fiction. And yet, despite the rise of digital inauthenticity, some performers remain stubbornly resistant to replacement. The reason is not celebrity, nor even talent. It is language.
On paper, this should not be a problem. AI can translate. It can imitate accents. It can string together grammatically correct sentences in dozens of languages. But acting, inconveniently, is not about grammatical correctness. It is about meaning, and meaning is where AI still falters.
Machine translation offers a cautionary tale. Google Translate, now powered by neural AI, has improved markedly since its debut in 2006. It can manage menus, emails and airport signage with impressive efficiency. What it struggles with, however, are the moments that matter most: idioms, metaphors, irony, and cultural shorthand. Ask it to translate a joke, a threat disguised as politeness, or a line heavy with emotional subtext, and it begins to unravel. Acting lives precisely in those gaps.
This matters because film language is rarely literal. Scripts, particularly in independent cinema, rely on figurative speech and symbolism to convey what characters cannot say outright. Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver is a useful example. The film’s recurring use of red operates on multiple levels: grief, desire, repression, liberation, and memory. These meanings are inseparable from the Spanish cultural context and emotional cadence. A translation may convey the words, but not the weight they carry. An AI-generated performance might replicate the sound, but not the sense.
This is where multilingual actors gain their edge. Performers such as Penélope Cruz and SofÃa Vergara do not simply switch between languages; they move between cultural logics. Their fluency allows them to inhabit characters without flattening them for international consumption. Language, for them, is not an accessory but a structuring force.
Beyond European cinema, this becomes even more pronounced. Languages such as Hindi, Arabic and Mandarin are spoken by hundreds of millions of people and underpin vast cinematic traditions. As global audiences grow more interconnected, the demand for authenticity increases rather than diminishes. Viewers can tell when a performance has been filtered through approximation. Subtle errors, misplaced emphasis, and an unnatural rhythm break the illusion.
There is also a practical dimension. Multilingualism expands opportunity. SofÃa Vergara has spoken openly about how learning English enabled her to work beyond Colombia and access Hollywood roles. But this movement is not a one-way export of talent into English-speaking cinema. Multilingual actors carry stories, styles and sensibilities back with them, enriching multiple industries at once.
Cinema has always thrived on such hybridity. Denzel Washington’s performances, for instance, draw on the cultural realities of growing up African American in the United States, while also reflecting stylistic influences from classic Hollywood and Westerns. His work demonstrates how identity and influence intersect on screen. Multilingual actors extend this intersection further, embodying multiple cultural frameworks simultaneously.
At times, linguistic authenticity is not merely artistic but ethical. Films that confront historical trauma, such as Schindler’s List, rely on language to anchor their moral seriousness. When Jewish actors perform in German, the choice is not incidental. Language becomes a site of memory and confrontation. It is difficult to imagine an automated voice carrying that responsibility without hollowing it out.
This is why claims that AI heralds the death of language miss the point. Language is not just a delivery system for information. It is a repository of history, humour, power and pain. Fluency is not only about knowing what to say, but when to hesitate, when to understate, and when to let silence do the work. These are not technical problems waiting to be solved; they are human instincts shaped by lived experience.
AI may one day improve its grasp of metaphor and nuance. It may even learn to sound convincing. But acting is not about sounding convincing; it is about being convincing. Until algorithms can acquire memory, cultural inheritance and emotional intuition, multilingual actors will remain irreplaceable. AI may learn to speak. But it cannot yet learn to mean.
In an industry increasingly tempted by shortcuts, language remains stubbornly resistant to automation. And for actors who can move between worlds, linguistic, cultural, and emotional, that resistance is not a weakness, but a quiet, enduring advantage.
