English Entertainment
FX and FX HD to air season 2 ‘Empire’ this women’s day
MUMBAI: Women’s Day is the celebration of female equality and achievement in social, economic, cultural spheres and what mirrors our society better than television! On this International Women’s Day, FX is commemorating television’s edgiest female character ‘Cookie Lyon’ in the hit musical series Empire who represents a feminist politics of insolence that has no time for prim notions of femininity as demure, quiet and self-effacing. The character, impeccably essayed by Golden Globe Winner Taraji P Henson, signifies the woman of today who is strong, confrontational, uncompromising and very much visible.
The season 2 of Empire will air on 8 March 2016 9 am onwards.
Empire follows the family of Lucious Lyon (Terrence Howard), a former drug dealer now turned hip hop mogul and CEO of Empire Entertainment, who learns he has ALS. His life begins to cave in around him after his past sins come back to haunt him following his diagnosis. Lucious, looking to groom one of his three sons Andre (Trai Byers), Jamal (Jussie Smollett), and Hakeem (Bryshere Y. Gray) to take over the family business, pits them against each other. Meanwhile, Cookie Lyon (Taraji P. Henson), Lucious’ ex-wife Cookie Lyon and the mother of his three sons is released from prison after serving a 17-year sentence.
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.
