Film Production
Paramount Pictures sees a change of guard
MUMBAI: Viacom’s motion picture company Paramount Pictures will see a change at the top. Veteran Hollywood talent manager who produced of the HBO hit television series The Sopranos Brad Grey will head the company from or before 1 March 2005.
Grey will take over Paramount Motion Picture Group chaireman and CEO. Grey will have ultimate authority on film development and production as well as business operations, worldwide. He replaces Sherry Lansing who had announced last year that she would not continue once her contract expired.
Lansing was responsible in a big way for hits such as Titanic and Braveheart. The trouble now at Paramount is that it has been several years since it had a major hit. Meanwhile rivals Warner and Sony jave scored big with The Lord Of the Rings and Spiderman.
Lansing’s stepping down signals the end of an era. When she became Paramount’s CEO in 1992 many industry observers felt that she had broken the glass ceiling for women in Hollywood.
Last year Paramount made films like The Stepford Wives that sank like a stone at the box office. Grey has the uneviable task of reinvigorating the studio. On a more positive side a recent Paramount film with Jim Carrey and Meryl Streep Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events has managed to pull in the bucks.. In addition The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie received a positive response.
Grey will report to Viacom co COO Tom Freston. Freston said, “Brad’s integrity and values are matched by his exceptional vast entertainment experience and common sense. Brad’s smarts, style and instincts have made him a winner time after time over the years. He’s an entrepreneur, a manager, a dealmaker, a hit maker and has that combination of creative business acumen. He’s the ideal leader for the challenges of motion picture business today and tomorrow.”
One upcoming film that Paramount is hoping will turn things around is War of the Worlds. This modern retake on the H.G. Wells classic novel reteams Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg. They had earlier worked on Minority Report. In fact Cruise has postponed plans to make a third installment of Mission Impossible so that he could work with Spielberg.
Film Production
Priyanka Kaur Dhillon joins SVF Entertainment as lead for music distribution
A seasoned content dealmaker with 16 years in digital and satellite media joins the Bengali entertainment powerhouse as it pushes into the pan-India music market
Mumbai: Priyanka Kaur Dhillon has made her move. The content acquisitions and commercials veteran, most recently commercial manager at Sony Pictures Networks India, has joined SVF Entertainment as lead for music distribution, stepping into one of the more interesting briefs in regional entertainment right now.
SVF is no ordinary regional label. Over 30 years it has built a formidable legacy in Bengali cinema and music, driven by culturally resonant storytelling and a catalogue that consistently punches above its weight. Its recent success with Chiraiya underlines the point. But the Kolkata-based powerhouse now has its sights firmly set beyond Bengal, most visibly through Legacy, a rap reality series produced in collaboration with hip-hop label Kalamkaar that signals a deliberate push into the pan-India music ecosystem.
Dhillon brings precisely the kind of muscle SVF needs for that expansion. At Sony Pictures Networks India, she led film acquisition and commercials and handled music licensing across the entire satellite network. Before that, she spent nearly 15 years at Hungama, rising to assistant general manager and leading strategic content licensing for the platform’s digital entertainment business, with a particular focus on international markets. Her label relationships span the full roster: Sony Music, Universal Music, Warner Music, Believe International, Tunecore, The Orchard and a clutch of smaller aggregators. She has negotiated and closed deals with Hollywood studios, Bollywood production houses and regional content players alike, building pricing models and deal structures off data analysis rather than instinct.
Announcing the appointment, Dhillon said she was “thrilled to begin this journey with an iconic Bengali music label and content powerhouse,” adding that SVF’s “constant drive to push boundaries” was what drew her to the role.
SVF has spent three decades proving that regional does not mean limited. With a sharp commercial operator now steering its music distribution, its bid to go national just got a good deal more serious.
