English Entertainment
Star Movies asserts No. 1 position in India, Singapore, Malaysia
MUMBAI: In an increasingly fragmented and competitive English entertainment market, the fight for the top dog slot is only getting more intense by the day. Star Movies has now asserted its number one position among English movie channels in India, Singapore and Malaysia.
The channel states that in Singapore, more viewers have tuned into it than any other Hollywood movie channel while in India it is also holding top spot as the country’s number one English movie channel, with 22 million people tuning in each week. The channel has quoted data from TNS Singapore, cable, 4+, 1 Jan 2005 to 28 July 2005, and from Tam c&s, 4+, 26 December 2004 to 16 July 2005. Furthermore Tam data c&s 15+ 8 -11 pm 1 January 2005 – 30 June 2005 shows that in India Star Movies leads among the Indian entertainment channels. It managed a TVR of 0.15 and a share of 24.7 among the English entertainment channels. Its arch rival HBO followed with a TVR of 0.13 and a share of 21.2.
In Malaysia, where substantiated ratings became available in April 2005 the channel claims to have consistently outstripped the competition, attracting more viewers and showcasing more top-20 movies than any other Hollywood movie channel. The channel has quoted data from AGB Nielsen Media Research, Cable, 6+, 1 April 2005 to 16 July 2005. Upcmoning films on the channel will include Million Dollar Baby, I, Robot, The Day After Tomorrow, Dodgeball, National Treasure and Starsky & Hutch.
Star Movies has deals with 20th Century Fox, Buena Vista (including Walt Disney Pictures, Miramax, Touchstone Pictures, and Hollywood Pictures), MGM / United Artists, Lakeshore, Myriad Pictures and DreamWorks SKG. The deal with Dreamworks is for India and Pakistan only.
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.
