Latest news with #TVstudio
BBC News
6 days ago
- Business
- BBC News
Prime minister backs Sunderland's Crown Works Studios plan
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has promised the government's "full backing" to get Sunderland's flagship Crown Works Studios project back on emerged earlier this summer that the main private backer behind the £450m film and TV studio development had pulled East leaders are now pushing to find new investors to ensure the huge regeneration scheme, earmarked for the banks of the River Wear in Pallion, can go City Council leader Michael Mordey has previously said he expects to have funding secured by the time land remediation works at the site are completed later this year. Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service on Tuesday, Sir Keir was asked what support Downing Street had offered since Cain International's withdrawal from the Crown Works replied: "Let me be really clear on this because I know it really matters – we really want to see this landmark project come to fruition."It is such a good project, good for jobs, good for growth."We announced £25m of funding for the studios in the Autumn Statement to support filmmaking and economic growth, and we are working with the mayor [of the North East, Kim McGuinness] very closely because we need to get private investors to get in behind this."I am determined that we will do everything we can to see this project come to fruition. It is really important locally, it is a huge thing, and we need to give it our full backing." Local authorities have committed to a total public investment of up to £ entertainment company Fulwell Entertainment, which was behind the Sunderland 'Til I Die Netflix series, had partnered with Cain on the joint venture to build 19 sound stages on the riverside firm has said it remains committed to working with Sunderland Council to find new had been hoped the scheme could create more than 8,000 jobs and Labour's new creative industries strategy highlights the "game-changing plans for film production in Sunderland".Planning permission was secured last year, but detailed approval has only been granted for a first phase of building that would include four sound stages, production offices, workshop buildings and a car park. Follow BBC Sunderland on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
The Guardian
11-08-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Final Draft review – could you do 3,240 sit-ups then have a lovely old chinwag?
In a giant TV studio somewhere in Japan, a retired baseball player and a former rugby star are 40 minutes into a competition to see who can do the most sit-ups. Lying with their feet hooked to the top of a steep, bright-pink slide that has long since become a river of sweat, they must respond to a buzzer every five seconds by hauling themselves up using just their abs and hitting a button with their foreheads. They've both done that more than 500 times – when someone eventually misses a rep, their feet detach and down they go. If this were Squid Game, the slide would end with a lethal drop. But instead it's Final Draft, a wholesome and emotional Japanese reality contest for ex-sportspeople, so all that's at risk is the right to remain in the competition. As a long sequence of incredibly gruelling elimination showdowns whittles 25 contestants down to the one who will win ¥30m (about £150,000), Squid Game is an influence, but so are Gladiators and Ninja Warrior, as well as modern Netflix sports fests like Physical: 100 and Ultimate Beastmaster. Mature British viewers might think of 1970s BBC stalwart Superstars, the multi-event contest between athletes from different disciplines that briefly threatened to turn parallel bar dips into the UK's national sport. Watching from outside Japan, the barrier to entry is that, unless you're so keen on water polo, kabaddi, American football or ultimate Frisbee that you watch those sports' Japanese domestic leagues, you will have heard of very few of the contestants. Perhaps Japanese viewers won't be that familiar with them either, since the lineup mixes champions with those who never quite made it. So who cares which of these ripped strangers will be the best at running up a mountain or traversing a monkey bar course? The endeavours in Final Draft are long grinds but the contestants are a happy, humble bunch and, watching them in adversity, we get to know and like them. Emerging personalities include gentle-natured bodybuilder Kenta Tsukamoto, and Hozumi Hasegawa, a wise, wiry boxer with three world-title belts. Olympic wrestler Eri Tosaka's determination and cunning makes her the most likely of the female contestants to defy the odds in a contest that has a few too many events based on pure physical strength. The star, though, is retired baseball hitter Yoshio Itoi, who looks less like a sportsman and more like the singer in a revered art-pop band– with his high cheekbones, debonair grin and the sort of floppy hair most 43-year-olds don't have the looks to get away with. Yet he soon proves to be fearsomely strong. Think Bryan Ferry on creatine, or Brett Anderson if he could deadlift a speaker stack. Final Draft needs alluring characters like Itoi-san, because there is a lot of time to fill. The season runs to an endurance-sapping six episodes, or enough time to perform 3,240 sit-ups: the events last for ever, and then in between the epic bouts of grunting and grappling, there's a lot of chat. The post-exertion interviews tend towards the bland, earnest and obvious: 'I was surprised,' people say after something happens that is to some extent unexpected. 'I was happy,' they report when an event goes well. The 10-second skip button is your friend as every eliminated contestant gives more or less the same speech about how much they respect their conquerors. To try to keep us entertained, the show employs every reality-contest trick it can think of, from splitting the gang into two groups with either luxury or basic accommodation, to allowing tearful Zoom calls with proud loved ones back home. Eventually, it all leads us to what the show is really about, which is the quiet tragedy of the sportsperson whose career is over. Having had to stop doing the thing they loved due to age, injury or just not being good enough, none of these people have known what to do with their 30s and 40s, and have ended up running fledgling businesses that provide paltry incomes, or working low-level jobs with bosses who are younger than them. Over dinner, or in the panting aftermath of another painful stamina test, they bond over the sadness of dead dreams and regrets that their glory days weren't greater. That prize money would fund a precious new start. So it does matter whether or not a guy with a sprained ankle can push a giant medicine ball up a slope, and the finale – a three-way tug of war, each labouring to drag themselves to victory, inch by agonising inch – is gripping despite being a much longer scene of grimacing sports personalities trying to pull each other over with ropes than you ever thought you could tolerate. Stick with Final Draft and your hard work is, eventually, rewarded. Final Draft is on Netflix now.
Bloomberg
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Bloomberg
Apollo-Backed Legendary Weighs Acquisition of Lionsgate Studios
Legendary Entertainment LLC, the independent film and TV studio behind the Dune trilogy and A Minecraft Movie, is considering a takeover of Lionsgate Studios Corp., according to people familiar with the matter. Legendary, which is backed by Apollo Global Management, first approached the company after Lionsgate finalized its separation from the Starz Entertainment Corp. TV network and streaming service in May, said the people, who asked not be named as the information is private. Those talks centered on a potential partnership to produce a handful of films so that Legendary could gauge how the two companies worked together and whether it should ultimately proceed with a takeover offer, the people said.
