World Screen

SANTA MONICA: Lightning Entertainment has been focused on the worldwide distribution and licensing of indie films, mainly for the theatrical market, and now the company is looking to enter into the TV-movie arena and will be at the AFM this year. Lightning Entertainment is heading to the event with Storm …

NEW YORK: Ahead of the AFM, Gene George, the executive VP of Starz Worldwide Distribution, talks to World Screen about distributing the premium channel's series worldwide and the state of the TV movie market. When Chris Albrecht became CEO of Starz in 2010, he quickly decided that what the pay-TV …

NEW YORK: Fernando Szew, the founding partner and CEO of MarVista Entertainment, discusses the challenges and opportunities in the marketplace and how that has changed over the last ten years. When MarVista Entertainment was set up ten years ago, it was mainly a distribution company that represented programming produced by …

SANTA MONICA: Leading the slate for Multicom Entertainment Group this AFM is The Secret Life of John Paul II, a feature film starring Aleksey Guskov and Giorgio Pasotti. It is based on the book penned by Lino Zani, a former ski instructor and friend of the late pope. “The Secret …

EL SEGUNDO: DIRECTV had 139,000 net U.S. additions for its third quarter, bringing its total subscribers to more than 37 million, with about 17 million subs in Latin America. These gains came in the same quarter that Time Warner Cable reported a loss of 306,000 video subscribers. Q3 revenues grew …

NEW YORK: Scott Jones, the president of Artist View Entertainment, tells World Screen that the key to success in independent movies is to know what the market needs. Jones started his career owning video retail outlets, and then served as executive producer on more than a dozen feature films. He …

NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES: USA Network veteran Bill McGoldrick is taking over as executive VP of original content at Syfy, while Jackie de Crinis takes on an expanded role at USA. McGoldrick takes over responsibility for the development and production of Syfy's original programming, replacing outgoing exec Mark Stern. He will …

STAMFORD/BEVERLY HILLS: WWE Studios and Film Roman are going to co-finance and co-produce up to 13 three-minute webisodes of a new adult animated series, Camp WWE. Film Roman is the animation studio behind The Simpsons and King of the Hill. It will now help to bring to life an animated …

NEW YORK: In the first quarter, 21st Century Fox earned $1.26 billion, compared with a profit of $2.23 billion a year prior, when one-time gains from the sale of its stake in pay-TV software company NDS Group lifted results. The fiscal earnings were also hurt by start-up costs for two …

NEW YORK: Net income rose 44 percent at Time Warner to $1.19 billion, with the strong performance from the cable networks helping to offset sluggishness in the film and magazine units. Revenue at the cable unit, which includes Turner Broadcasting channels such as CNN and premium movie service HBO, was …