Judge orders pause on Paramount-Warner merger after challenge from 12 states

$81bn merger halted for at least two weeks after US states sued to block deal, saying it would ‘extinguish competition’ A federal judge on Monday ordered Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery to halt their $81bn merger for at least two weeks, allowing states that are challenging the deal more time to see their case through in court. Twelve states, led by California , sued to block Paramount’s pending buyout of Warner last week – alleging that such a combination would “extinguish competition” in Hollywood and lead to fewer choices for consumers, particularly moviegoers and cable customers across the US. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/M580hcA via IFTTT

Peter Watkins, Oscar-winning director of The War Game, dies aged 90

Radical English director who clashed with the BBC over his ‘horrifying’ film about nuclear war, was forced to look abroad to continue working

Peter Watkins, the radical British film-maker who won an Oscar for his controversial drama-documentary The War Game, about a nuclear attack on Britain, has died aged 90. In a statement, his family said he had died in hospital on Thursday in Bourganeuf, close to the small town of Felletin in central France, where he had lived for 25 years. They added: “The world of cinema loses one of its most incisive, inventive, and unclassifiable voices. We would like to thank all those who supported him throughout this long and sometimes solitary struggle.”

Watkins was an uncompromising figure who clashed with the BBC after the latter failed to show The War Game on broadcast TV, and subsequently led a peripatetic film-making existence, looking overseas for backing. He was wary of the press. In a rare interview he spoke to the Guardian in 2000, saying he was “someone who has been working for 30 years to help shift the power balance between public and TV”. He added: “Had TV taken an alternative direction during the 1960s and 1970s and worked in a more open way, global society today would be vastly more humane and just.”

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