English Entertainment
Star Movies goes ‘Into The West’ from Thursday
MUMBAI: In order to add variety to its lineup, Star Movies has over the years aired mini series like Lost and Taken.
Now it will air the epic miniseries Into the West every Thursday at 9 pm from 4 January.
It looks at the opening up of the American West in the 19th century. It tells stories from that period from the perspective of two families, one of white settlers from Europe and one of Native Americans who must deal with the new inhabitants.
The two families tell the dramatic stories of the development of the West from their distinct points of view. One family is the Wheeler clan, a Virginia family of wheelwrights making their trek westward. The other family is a plains Native American family hailing from the Lakota tribe.
For too long Hollywood has depicted Indians as savages, enemies and losers. Now through this miniseries a generation of Native American filmmakers and actors are trying to overturn stereotypes and tell its own truth. This series showcases the glaring differences in perspective as seen through not only the eyes and teachings of the dominant culture, but also as it was and is seen from the American Indian perspective.
There will be a recreation of key events like Battle of Little Bighorn, Buffalo hunts, the expansion of the American railroad, Wounded Knee. There will be quite a few subtitles on the show one of the few times where a show on an English entertainment channel has subtitles. The series was shot in Calgary and New Mexico.
The show has a large cast, with about 250 speaking parts. The series features actors like Wes Studi, Irene Bedard, Russell Means, Graham Greene, Raoul Trujillo, Gordon Tootoosis, Michael Spears, Lance Henriksen, Simon Baker, Gil Birmingham and Sheila Tousey.
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.
