English Entertainment
Sky and HBO extend content partnership deal
MUMBAI: The Home of Box Office certainly wants to live up to its name. In a recent development Sky and HBO have extended their original drama commitment and output deal to at least 2020.
Under the new agreement, BSkyB and HBO will work together to develop and produce new drama series for broadcast on their networks in the UK, Ireland and US. Their goal will be to identify projects with the potential to run for multiple seasons and to commission these shows, with production to be jointly funded by the two companies.
The collaboration includes an extended content output deal to ensure that Sky Atlantic remains the exclusive home of first-run HBO programmes in Britain and Ireland through 2020.
The co-production agreement builds on the partnership that Sky and HBO have enjoyed since 2010. With the extended output deal, new HBO programmes – including True Detective and Looking – will continue to premiere exclusively on Sky Atlantic along with the return of award-winning shows such as Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire and Girls.
Sky Atlantic has become one of the strongest channel brands in British television in just three years since its launch and is currently rated among one of the top three must-have pay TV networks according to Sky customers.
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.
