Hollywood
Robert De Niro to be honoured with Hollywood Career Achievement Award
MUMBAI: Two-time Oscar-winning actor Robert De Niro will be honored with the Hollywood Career Achievement Award. The awards ceremony will take place at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, on 1 November, 2015.
The Hollywood Film Awards has recognised excellence in the art of cinema and filmmaking for 18 years, honouring some of the world’s biggest stars.
“The Hollywood Film Awards is an incredible brand, previewing some of the biggest movies and stars of the year, while launching the award season. We are honored to have Robert De Niro as this year’s recipient of the Hollywood Career Achievement Award,” said Dick Clark Productions CEO Allen Shapiro.
De Niro is currently starring in Warner Bros. Pictures’ The Intern and will appear next in 20th Century Fox’s Joy, coming out 25 December, 2015.
Past honorees of the Hollywood Career Achievement Award include Glenn Close, Harrison Ford, Richard Gere, Dustin Hoffman, Michael Keaton and Robin Williams among others.
De Niro launched his motion picture career in Brian De Palma’s The Wedding Party in 1969 and has since starred in multiple movies including The Godfather, Part II for which he won the Oscar.
Hollywood
US theatre group opposes Paramount, Warner Bros. merger, calls it ‘harmful’
Exhibitors warn mega deal could shrink film output and weaken cinema ecosystem
LAS VEGAS: Cinema United has come out strongly against the proposed merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, warning it could concentrate too much power in the hands of a single player and disrupt the global film ecosystem.
Speaking at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, the group’s chief executive Michael O’Leary did not mince words as he addressed thousands of theatre owners. The deal, reportedly valued at $110 billion, was agreed in March after Netflix exited the bidding process.
“We believe this transaction will be harmful to exhibition, consumers and the entire entertainment ecosystem,” O’Leary said, cautioning that greater consolidation would allow fewer distributors to dictate terms around release windows, scheduling and access to film libraries. Theatre owners argue that such scale could reduce competition and ultimately mean fewer films making it to cinemas.
Pushing back, a spokesperson for Paramount Skydance said the merged entity plans to release 30 films annually in theatres, while continuing to operate both studios separately. The company added that the deal would expand opportunities for creators and strengthen competition by backing more projects globally.
However, exhibitors remain unconvinced. Drawing parallels with The Walt Disney Company’s 2019 acquisition of Fox, O’Leary noted a drop in wide theatrical releases post-merger, reinforcing concerns that consolidation often leads to fewer films.
“Unfortunately, history shows us that consolidation results in fewer films being produced for movie theaters,” O’Leary said.
Beyond output, Cinema United also flagged concerns around theatrical windows, warning that a combined Paramount-Warner entity could exert greater control over how long films remain exclusively in cinemas before shifting to other platforms.
With the debate set to intensify, the clash highlights a familiar tension in Hollywood: scale versus diversity. For theatre owners, the stakes are clear, as they push to ensure that bigger does not mean fewer stories on the big screen.
