English Entertainment
Star India acquires format rights to ‘Desperate Housewives’
MUMBAI: These days, hardly a successful Western format escapes Indian television’s attention. Same way, the obscenely popular ABC soap Desperate Housewives – which is presently having its fine run on Star World in India – has also found its desi destination.
Star India COO Sameer Nair today revealed that the network acquired the format rights to Desperate Housewives. “But it will take a long time,” he said on the launch plans.
When queried as to whether soap queen Ekta Kapoor would be assigned the task of producing the Indian adaptation, Nair without definitively confirming it, admitted that Ekta Kapoor has got an edge.
Nair also recalled how Ekta had approached Star with a similar pilot project almost three years ago, much before Desperate Housewives became such a huge hit in the US as well as globally.
“Three years ago, Ekta Kapoor had approached us with this same topic which she had titled Kudiyon ka Zamana. But then the television space wasn’t much used to such bold subjects. I think even Ekta shelved the idea later.”
As already reported by sister concern Tellychakkar.com, Ekta Kapoor, Vinta Nanda and Manish Goswami have already expressed their desire to re-work the soap for Indian audiences.
Interestingly, Desperate Housewives is the show which helped the US broadcaster ABC to make a strong comeback against its competitors including Fox. The soap had made its debut in India on Star World this year on 5 July.
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.
