Golden Karavan’s Apoorva Bakshi and Jeff Sagansky talk to Kaltrina Bylykbashi about why India needs a new production company that aims to serve emerging OTT players in the territory. The emergence on India’s newest OTT production company, Golden Karavan, comes with the steep rise in take-up of streaming services in the territory and the understanding […]
Sony Pictures Television Networks has reached an agreement to acquire a “substantial” majority stake in Funimation Productions, in a deal that values the Japanese anime distributor at around US$150 million. Funimation, which sells Japanese content in the US, has a catalogue of toons that includes Dragon Ball Z, Cowboy Bebop and One Piece, and operates […]
Sony has lowered full-year forecasts for its entertainment business after reporting a double-digit decline in revenue at the division, which includes the feature film, TV and channels operations. The Japanese company recorded a massive write down at its Sony Pictures division earlier this year, but said yesterday the division can return to growth by producing […]
Language-learning kids series StoryZoo will head to ORF in Austria after the fledgling kids prodco of the same name sealed its first international deal for the preschool series. StoryZoo was founded by former Sony Pictures and Endemol digital exec Johannes Gropp. The StoryZoo series was developed with language experts, and uses music and animation to […]
Marge Dean has joined Robot Chicken prodco Stupid Buddy Stoodios as general manager. Dean (pictured) joins from Mattel’s production banner Playground, where she was director of production. She is one of the most seasoned US execs in animation having also worked at Wildbrain Animation, Technicolor, Sony Pictures and Warner Bros Animation. Stupid Buddy, which was […]
Katherine Pope will run the new TV production arm of film producer Jeff Robinov’s independent movie studio. Having launched his company, Studio 8, last year with financial backing from China’s Fosun Group, former Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group president Robinov is branching out into television. Former Chernin Group president Pope will run the unit, which […]
Canada-based Entertainment One has launched a global business and legal affairs division, with AMC Networks content executive Marci Wiseman hired to run it. To this point, Wiseman has been executive in charge of owned content strategy and distribution at Walking Dead channels group AMCN, and was also head of business affairs for five years. She […]
AMC Networks International is taking its flagship channel brand to Latin American pay TV. A deal with DirecTV Latin America brings the AMC network to seven Spanish-speaking countries, namely Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. AMC launches this month and will offer shows such as recent drama Halt & Catch Fire, plus movies […]
UK pay TV provider BT has launched a buy-to-keep digital service that offers movies from the likes of Sony Pictures and the 20th Century Fox studio. The service will allow BT customers with YouView set-top boxes to purchase titles to watch as many times as they like. BT intends to add television box set series […]
Formal antitrust proceedings to examine programming agreements between US studios and European pay TV broadcasters are underway and could ultimately be extended to include other distributors, the European Commission confirmed today. EU spokesman Antoine Colombani told TBI this morning that the focus of the rights probe is currently restricted to the Hollywood Studios and their dealings […]
