English Entertainment
Simon Sutton is HBO international president
MUMBAI: Former MGM international television distribution executive VP Simon Sutton will be HBO international president
Reporting to HBO COO Bill Nelson, Sutton will be responsible for overseeing HBO’s worldwide pay and basic television ventures. These include the wholly owned Warner Channel in Latin America as well as partnerships for HBO Asia, HBO India, HBO Brasil, HBO Czech, HBO Hungary, HBO Olé, HBO Poland and HBO Romania, among others.
Nelson said, “With the HBO brand continuing to grow throughout the world, we found in Simon an executive who can quickly take the reigns of HBO International. He possesses a full understanding of the global marketplace and has the unique ability to easily adapt to its ever-changing landscape. With Simon leading the division, we are well positioned to grow our international businesses.”
Sutton was most recently EVP of international television at MGM Worldwide Television Distribution, prior to the company’s sale to Sony. He succeeds Steve Rosenberg, who left HBO last year.
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.
