English Entertainment
‘Six Feet Under’ will rest in peace
MUMBAI: HBO is preparing to give a quiet burial to its critically acclaimed black comedy Six Feet Under.
The US cable channel has stated that the upcoming fifth season will be its last. In India the show airs on Zee English and deals with a dysfunctional family who run a funeral home.
Reports indicate that series creator Alan Ball recently told HBO executives that he felt the show would have run out of creative steam by the end of the upcoming 12-episode season.
The show stars Peter Krause, Rachel Griffiths, Lauren Ambrose and Frances Conroy. It has been recognised at several award shows including the Golden Globes and the Emmies.
Production on the fifth season will start on 16 November. However HBO has not decided when the show will air.
Ball was quoted in a Reuters report saying, “Working on Six Feet Under has been enormously fulfilling creatively, but if the show is about anything, it’s about the fact that everything comes to an end. I will miss working with such enormously talented writers, cast, staff and crew and I’ll always be grateful to HBO for allowing and encouraging us to tell the story we set out to tell in a challenging and uncompromising way.”
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.
