English Entertainment
SAG Awards: ‘Desperate Housewives’ up against ‘Sex And the City’
MUMBAI: The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) in the US has announced the nominees in television and film for its 11th annual awards. The event will take place on 5 February at the Los Angeles Shrine Exposition Center.
In the US it will be aired on TNT while in India it will telecast on Zee English.
What is unique about this is that unlike other awards shows like the Oscars, the Screen Actors Guild Awards are selected purely by actors’ peers. Two nominated panels — one for television and one for film — comprised of 2100 Sad members each from across the US.
The comedy category honouring an ensemble pits ABC’s Desperate Housewives against HBO’s Sex And The City, Fox’s Arrested Development, NBC’s Will & Grace and CBS’ Everybody Loves Raymond. This is considered the most important category as the entire cast’s efforts at working together is looked at. The nominees in the drama category include NBC’s The West Wing and HBO’s The Soprano’s and Six Feet Under.
HBO was also nominated in the film category. Catalina Sandino Moreno who played a Columbian who tries her hand at drug trafficking in Maria Full Of Grace was nominated for the lead actress in a motion picture. She is competing with Hilary Swank in Clint Eastwood’s feminist themed Million Dollar Baby. It is surprising to note that one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year Closer was shut out
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.
