Random News Stories

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I bet that went over like a lead balloon...

[Jim Cassedy]

NoNoise1949.jpg


[ Source: Albany Democrat-Herald, Albany Oregon, April 7 1949 ]

[Ed Gordon]

Paramount and Skydance inch closer to a merger as key hurdle looms
Story by Alex Sherman, CNBC

Paramount Global and Skydance Media are making progress on a deal that would merge the media companies and buy out controlling shareholder Shari Redstone.

Paramount Global’s special committee and David Ellison’s Skydance Media, backed by private equity firms KKR and RedBird Capital Partners, are narrowing in on how to value Skydance’s assets as part of a merger, as well as how much equity to add to the company as part of a recapitalization, according to people familiar with the matter.

The sides are close to agreeing on a value for Skydance. The entertainment company will be valued at around $5 billion and merged with Paramount Global, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. Ellison and the private equity firms plan to raise roughly $4.5 billion to $5 billion in new equity. Some of that — about $2 billion — will be used to pay Redstone, and another substantial portion will be used to pay down debt.

The buyers would ideally like to get a deal done in May, said the people. Three of the people said that Paramount Global was slow to open a data room to the Skydance consortium, which has slightly pushed back the timeline on a deal. The exclusivity window on merger talks ends May 3, but the Skydance consortium wants to extend it by two weeks, said the people.

Skydance plans to name Ellison as CEO of Paramount Global and former NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell as the president, said two of the people. Current Paramount CEO Bob Bakish would depart the company, the people said.

Separately, Apollo and Sony have held preliminary discussions about teaming up for a deal that would buy out all Paramount Global shareholders at a premium, according to people familiar with the matter. The special committee hasn’t received concrete details on that offer and isn’t viewing it as a competitive bid to Skydance’s interest, two of the people said.

Still, the committee had more details on an initial offer made by Apollo, which it chose to ignore in favor of exclusive talks with Skydance. The special committee favored Skydance’s offer over Apollo’s in part because it offered shareholders future upside by keeping the company public with a cleaner balance sheet, one of the people said.

Spokespeople for Apollo, the Paramount Global special committee, Paramount Global, and Skydance’s consortium declined to comment.

One significant hurdle that remains is Paramount Global’s renewal agreement with Charter Communications for CBS and its cable networks. That deal is relevant to the value of Paramount Global, which could take a hit if Charter drops the networks or agrees to a lower carriage rate, the people said.

The deadline for that agreement is April 30. Paramount Global reports first-quarter earnings one day earlier, on April 29.

Paramount Global is still dependent on its traditional TV business, which accounts for about two-thirds of the company’s total revenue.

There are signs Charter could prove to be a tough negotiator with Paramount Global: Last year the cable provider, the second-largest in the U.S., briefly stopped carrying Disney’s networks when renewal negotiations between those two companies faltered. (The parties reached a deal 10 days later.)

Paramount’s cable networks are far less popular than Disney’s ESPN, which may put Bakish in a position of weakness.

The timing of the renewal and the deal talks set up an awkward dynamic, where Bakish, who would ultimately leave the company under a Skydance merger, will control Paramount Global’s fate with Charter.

Thus far, Bakish has always reached renewal deals with the major pay-TV distributors since taking over as CEO, dating back to his time running Viacom, beginning in 2016.

Bakish has privately argued against the Skydance deal because it dilutes common shareholders, according to people familiar with the matter. Several Paramount Global investors have also publicly written letters to the company’s board urging directors not to move forward with a Skydance deal, arguing it gives Redstone a massive premium for her controlling shares while leaving common shareholders out in the cold.

Under the terms of the deal, nearly 50% of the company will be owned by Skydance and its private equity partners, CNBC reported earlier this month. The rest of the company would be owned by common shareholders, and the company will continue to trade publicly.

“At Paramount, we’re always looking for ways to create shareholder value. And to be clear, that’s for all shareholders,” Bakish said during his company’s most recent earnings call in February.

Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Paramount Presents
A Skydance and its private equity partners Production

[Jim Cassedy]

The theater I'm at opened in 1916, and has its' 108th anniversary coming up soon.
I've been searching old San Francisco newspapers online, looking for stories and
info about opening night at the theater. In the process of doing that, I've come across
many other interesting and amusing articles, such as this one:

WhiskyWife.jpg
(SF Chronicle, May 5th 1916)

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

The outside vent cover was also the problem in Fallon. It gets cold and snows there too. Bob, the owner said there was a dryer vent cover on it at one time. When I checked out back, it was gone. By the next trip another had been put back on.

[Frank Cox]

I have about two feet of horizontal boiler exhaust pipe about fifteen feet off of the ground and that seems to be a wonderful nesting location.

Every spring I have to climb up and put a grill on the end and every fall I have to climb back up and take the grill back off since it'll freeze over if it's left in place.

So twice a year I'm draggin' out the ladder...

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Goes with the post right above this one. Huge Bird that was stuck inside an 8" exhaust pipe...

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I serviced the movie theater in down town Fallon for quite a few years. This area is fascinating to say the least. Aside from the NAS, there are hidden Indian caves, thousands of petroglyphs, enormous sand dunes, and an atomic test site called Project Shoal. There is also the Churchill County Museum, and a couple small Casinos, and a shuttered drive in. And of course, the fighter jets out doing practice runs and maneuvers over the desert, often at low altitudes... Training at the NAS only went on at certain times of the year, otherwise it was a quiet area in general. Because it was so far from home base, I'd sometimes get stuck over a weekend waiting for a part to arrive on Monday. So I'd spend time exploring. John Eickoff previously serviced the place.
The theater opened in 1920, burned down in the mid 1940's, and was twinned in 1984. It's on the State of Nevada register of historic places, and still open today.
A funny story about servicing the place... The owner called and he was having short lamp life in the balcony theater lamphouse, (Super Lumex) Checked exhaust airflow with my meter, and it was only a tenth of what it normally was. Exhaust blower was fine, so there had to be blockage in the duct. Disassembled some of the duct sections and found a giant Crow wedged in a section of the duct... Said Crow was dead, and had to be forced out of the pipe with a stick. Somewhere I have a picture of it... Normal lamp life resumed after that.

Back around 2015, a new 8 screen theater was constructed near the hospital. Not sure how it survives... there are over 3000 people stationed on the base, and about 9500 in Fallon proper. There is also the usual on- base movie theater. So there are 10 screens in Fallon today feeding off less than 13k people...

Geting back to Top Gun Maverick, parts of it were definately filmed on the base and the surrounding areas, but watching the Movie, there was basically almost nothing recognizable to me as being in Fallon.

[Frank Cox]

With your F-16 you'd be there in just under an hour. (At cruising speed.)

[Leo Enticknap]

Telegraph story about the real "Top Gun" school

The real US Navy Top Gun fighter school is nothing like the movies

You can be the best of the best. But you’d better not use that phrase

There was a gap of nearly four decades between the two Top Gun blockbuster films – but it appears that cinemagoers may have a shorter wait before their next fix of US Navy fast jet shenanigans.

Following the roaring success of ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ in 2022, the script for a potential third instalment is already said to be in production.

Any link between the Paramount Pictures films and the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm appears, at first blush, to be tenuous.

But it’s closer than you might imagine.

Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Glenn Powell and fellow cast members portray the Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor programme as competitive, populated by hefty egos and, well, mavericks.

In the first movie, pilots under instruction at Top Gun have time to go drinking in the evenings, have a stab at karaoke and oil up for a rowdy game of beach volleyball.

While military personnel often watch war films cradling their heads in their hands in despair at the inaccuracies, Top Gun is at least related to what takes place in reality, even if some of the flying scenarios swiftly rocket into the realms of pure fantasy.

Naturally the real students are far more serious and professional, as you might expect when you’re flying a F-18 Super Hornet or F-35C fifth generation stealth fighter, which you borrow from your squadron and fly to Naval Air Station Fallon. Back when the original movie was filmed, the Fighter Weapons School was based at the then Naval Air Station Miramar, close to the beaches of San Diego. In 1996, however, it moved 200 miles from the sea to the Nevada desert, where NAS Fallon sits amid huge aerial tactics ranges.

Top Gun is the very pinnacle of leading-edge naval aviation tactical training.

When its band of chosen students aren’t flying, attending debriefs or lectures, they’re probably going for a stress-relieving run or catching up on some well-deserved rest.

Those who attend are competitive but there is an emphasis on teamwork, and the pilots are given the ultimate education in their art on the understanding that all they’ve garnered is passed on to others. A Top Gun graduate is not merely a better strike fighter pilot, but an expert instructor in tactics and weapons, with a mission to make their fellow pilots better.

Top Gun was hatched during the Vietnam War, when US Navy crews flying the F-4 Phantom found themselves flailing as they fought an adversary flying small, agile MiG-17 and MiG-21s. The first course took place in 1969.

I once visited the carrier USS George H W Bush in the Western Approaches to the English Channel and watched as F-18 after F-18 was catapulted into grey, summer skies. It was a steely, sobering show of pure military might, and brought home just how much power is at the disposal of a carrier strike group. But that power, to be effective, must be directed with great skill. The Top Gun course lasts for 13 weeks, with the highly classified training constantly evolving to maintain up-to-the-minute relevance.

Alongside academic lectures, there is a flight training plan which begins with one-on-one dogfighting, before evolving into more complex missions involving four jets. Air-to-air and air-to-ground attacks are simulated, as pilots fight their way to targets, then extract themselves. After each sortie there’s a lengthy debrief, during which the hour’s flying is unpicked in minute detail and lessons learned.

Instructors playing the enemy, known as ‘red air’, fly F-5, F-16 and F-18 Legacy aircraft, as well as the F-35C.

Those who pass will usually go on to instruct at the two Strike Fighter Weapons Schools on the west and east coasts or at a Fleet replenishment squadron. Others stay on to teach at Top Gun itself.

The Royal Navy and RAF operate a joint force of F-35B jump jets like those of the US Marines. These aircraft are sometimes available for operations from British carriers, as seen aboard HMS Prince of Wales, 20 February 2024 Credit: AS1 Amber Mayall RAF/PA

Those who attend are competitive but there is an emphasis on teamwork, and the pilots are given the ultimate education in their art on the understanding that all they’ve garnered is passed on to others. A Top Gun graduate is not merely a better strike fighter pilot, but an expert instructor in tactics and weapons, with a mission to make their fellow pilots better.

Top Gun was hatched during the Vietnam War, when US Navy crews flying the F-4 Phantom found themselves flailing as they fought an adversary flying small, agile MiG-17 and MiG-21s. The first course took place in 1969.

I once visited the carrier USS George H W Bush in the Western Approaches to the English Channel and watched as F-18 after F-18 was catapulted into grey, summer skies. It was a steely, sobering show of pure military might, and brought home just how much power is at the disposal of a carrier strike group. But that power, to be effective, must be directed with great skill.

The Top Gun course lasts for 13 weeks, with the highly classified training constantly evolving to maintain up-to-the-minute relevance.

Alongside academic lectures, there is a flight training plan which begins with one-on-one dogfighting, before evolving into more complex missions involving four jets. Air-to-air and air-to-ground attacks are simulated, as pilots fight their way to targets, then extract themselves. After each sortie there’s a lengthy debrief, during which the hour’s flying is unpicked in minute detail and lessons learned.

Instructors playing the enemy, known as ‘red air’, fly F-5, F-16 and F-18 Legacy aircraft, as well as the F-35C.

Those who pass will usually go on to instruct at the two Strike Fighter Weapons Schools on the west and east coasts or at a Fleet replenishment squadron. Others stay on to teach at Top Gun itself.

They will then join an operational squadron as the unit’s weapons and tactics expert, infusing its pilots with all they’ve learnt at Fallon.

Top Gun was the highest grossing film of 1986, making $357m. Top Gun: Maverick was the second highest grossing of 2022, with £1.5bn worldwide. It was the most financially successful film Tom Cruise has ever starred in.

Paramount paid £11,000 per hour to the US Navy to use F-18E (single seat) and F-18F (dual seat) piloted jets for filming. The service happily assisted, knowing that the end products are the ultimate recruiting tool.

Which brings us to the British naval fast jet story.

The Royal Navy’s Sea Harrier was withdrawn in 2006. It was the only Harrier variant with a targeting radar – thus the only one which could be used as a fully capable air-to-air fighter. Thereafter only GR7/9 ground attack Harriers were available, with very limited air-to-air capability.

Royal Navy fast jet capability suffered another severe blow when Prime Minister David Cameron controversially decided to axe all remaining Harriers as part of the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review. Fleet Air Arm Harrier pilots were made redundant and all Royal Navy fast jet training halted that morning.

It is said that Cameron regretted his decision to cull carrier strike mere months later. This would not be surprising as by that point Britain was involved in air strike operations over Libya. When Britain wanted to make a strike, RAF jets had to fly in all the way across the sea from Italy or Cyprus – or indeed, in not a few cases, all the way from the UK.

Meanwhile French jets were catapulting off their carrier close by the Libyan coast and arriving over the battlefield in a matter of minutes, spending almost all their expensive flight time doing useful work rather than mostly trundling along above the sea (or France) as Britain’s were. Italian and US Harrier carriers were also in action off the coast.

But Britain did have a plan for new carriers, and they did eventually arrive. The United States Navy agreed to blend British sailors into its own training programme as preparation for this.

The first of our aviators to arrive there was then-Lieutenant Stephen Collins RN. After coming top of his class in his initial training, Collins was sent to fighter attack squadron VFA-14 “Tophatters” at NAS Lemoore, California, then on to learn aggressive dog-fighting tactics.

A seven-month deployment in Nimitz-class supercarrier USS John C Stennis followed, flying close air support sorties over Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. Piloting an F-18 Super Hornet, Collins took part in air strikes in support of troops fighting on the ground. His callsign, awarded by his fellow aviators, was ‘Lothar’ – which stands for Loser Of The American Revolution.

Lothar did so well that he not only was picked to go to Top Gun, he came top of his course there too. Only a small percentage of US Navy pilots graduate the course and wear the Top Gun patch. Coming top, to use a phrase familiar from the films, makes Collins the best of the best indeed. Now a Commander, he is a major asset for the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm.

Over 40 British pilots have now completed flying training in F-18s with the Americans, at about half the cost of conducting it here. Others have done well too, and Top Gun last year suggested that a second Fleet Air Arm pilot would be a suitable candidate for its world-famous course. The Royal Navy confirms that pilot will be attending.

British carrier strike has had its issues, including flood, fire and having to spend millions fixing ships’ propellers.

Yet the Fleet Air Arm, training alongside our friends and allies in the US, has shown that British naval pilots are among the best of the best – and consistently out-perform their RAF and Army colleagues.

So far, so good.

But there’s only so much cosying up that can happen between the military and Hollywood.

Despite its close involvement in the development of both films, there is one boundary that can never be crossed at Top Gun.

Anyone quoting from the movies is immediately awarded an on-the-spot $5 fine.

Interesting, but just one slight nit pick: the story suggests (but does not explicitly state) that Fallon, NV, is 200 miles from San Diego. I know that it isn't, because the Fallon Theatre is one of my service customers: I make the 439-mile drive from Loma Linda to Fallon around once every 18 months. I'd guess that it's around 550 miles from San Diego using the quickest driving route.

[Leo Enticknap]

image.png
This is supposed to be "entertainment" ?!

I remember that Fox News once put an "entertainment" tag on coverage of an execution, too.

[Frank Cox]

https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2024/0...ilt-wrong-lot/

‘Are you kidding me?’: Property owner stunned after $500,000 house built on wrong lot

Anger, accusations, and legal action are firing up on the Big Island after a construction company built a half-million-dollar house on the wrong lot.
By Daryl Huff

Published: Mar. 26, 2024 at 5:10 PM HST|Updated: Mar. 26, 2024 at 5:35 PM HST
HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - Anger, accusations and legal action are firing up on the Big Island after a construction company built a half-million-dollar house on the wrong property.
The lot owner doesn’t want the house and has endured problems like higher taxes and squatters. Now, to add insult to injury, she’s being sued over someone else’s mistake.
The still vacant three-bedroom, two-bath house on a one-acre lot in Puna’s Hawaiian Paradise Park is worth about $500,000.
But it could cost a lot of people more than that as they head to court to sort it out.

It all started in 2018, when Annaleine “Anne” Reynolds thought she’d found the perfect, serene parcel in Paradise Park to host her meditative healing women’s retreats.
“There’s a sacredness to it and the one that I chose to buy had all the right qualities,” she said.
The price was also right — available in a county tax auction for about $22,500.
But while she waited in California through the pandemic for the right time to use it, the lot was bulldozed and a house rose on the property. She was unaware of the construction until she got a call last year from a real estate broker who had learned the mistake.

“And then he informed me, ‘oh well, I just sold the house, and it happens to be on your property,’” Reynolds recalled.
“So we need to resolve this. And I’m like, what? Are you kidding me?”
What’s undisputed is that PJ’s Construction was hired by developer Keaau Development Partnership, LLC to build about a dozen homes on properties that the developers bought in the subdivision — where the lots are identified by telephone poles.
An attorney for PJ’s Construction said the developers didn’t want to hire surveyors.

Honolulu attorney James DiPasquale was hired by Reynolds when she was sued along with everyone else associated with the property or construction.
“There’s a lot of fingers being pointed between the developer and the contractor and some subs,” DiPasquale said.
Because it can’t be sold, the house has become a nightmare for Reynolds. A neighbor told Hawaii News Now that squatters were immediately attracted to the brand new vacant house.
“Before they put the fence on this property there was people coming already to this property. I know kind of looking inside,” he said.

When she inspected and saw the bathrooms, Reynolds discovered they’d done more than just look. “Both had poop. The hallway one had poop on the floor. It was so disgusting,” she said.
Along with the cost of fencing, she’s paying property taxes that went from a few hundred to several thousand dollars. The developers tried to settle the issue. Reynold’s attorney said they offered to swap her their lot right next door or sell her the house at a discount.
She refused both offers.
“It would set a dangerous precedent, if you could go on to someone else’s land, build anything you want, and then sue that individual for the value of it,” DiPasquale said.

After trying to resolve the problem, Keaau Development Partnership sued PJ’s Construction, the architect, the prior property owner’s family and the county, which approved the permits.
They also sued Reynolds. “It’s awful. It’s awful,” she said.
Representatives of the developers and construction company and Reynolds all said they are being reasonable and the others aren’t. That’s why the developer says he pulled everyone into the lawsuit — in hopes a judge can help unravel this half-million-dollar mistake.

[Frank Cox]

Her attitude has evidently changed recently.

From 2019:

Every morning, Lena Forsen wakes up beneath a brass-trimmed wooden mantel clock dedicated to “The First Lady of the Internet.”

It was presented to her more than two decades ago by the Society for Imaging Science and Technology, in recognition of the pivotal—and altogether unexpected—role she played in shaping the digital world as we know it.
...
Lena doesn’t harbor any resentment toward Sawchuk and his imitators for how they appropriated her image; the only note of regret she expressed was that she wasn’t better compensated. In her view, the photograph is an immense accomplishment that just happened to take on a life of its own. “I’m really proud of that picture,” she said.

It makes sense that she would feel this way: Unlike so many women in tech, Lena has at least been acknowledged, even feted, for her contribution. “She did that work, and then people started using the photo in this neat new way, and now she kind of has this immortality woven into the design of the machine,” Hicks said. “That’s why others, who are concerned about tech bias, have a problem with it. It’s intentionally designing systems around a particular set of power relationships.”

https://www.wired.com/story/finding-...aint-of-jpegs/

[Leo Enticknap]

I thought initially that this could be the Telegraph's April fool story for this year, but it appears to be genuine. Lena Forsén has a Wikipedia entry that corroborates the biographical info in the story. Terry Benzel also exists, though the Telegraph appears to "misgender" her. What made me suspicious is that they gave no links to external evidence that the IEEE had gone woke and banned the photo from their journals, and, interestingly, I couldn't find any in three pages of Google results, either. But DuckDuckGo came up with this, so it looks like the story is legit. I can't for the life of me find their actual April fool, though, and it's usually not that difficult to spot.

A photograph of a Playboy model that has been used by engineers in image processing tests since the 1970s has been dropped because it is not “inclusive”.

The famous photograph of Swedish former model Lena Forsén - cropped from the Playboy original - has been a staple in image processing research for decades.

However, a leading organisation in the computing field has said that starting from April 1, they will no longer be accepting any research papers which include the 1972 “Lena image”.

Terry Benzel, the vice president of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a global professional association, said: “New manuscript submissions will no longer be allowed to include the Lena image.”
‘Code of ethics’

He cited a motion passed by the group’s publishing board, which stated: “IEEE’s diversity statement and supporting policies such as the IEEE code of ethics speak to IEEE’s commitment to promoting an inclusive and equitable culture that welcomes all.

“In alignment with this culture and with respect to the wishes of the subject of the image, Lena Forsén, IEEE will no longer accept submitted papers, which include the picture.

The use of the image in the tech world has not been without controversy over the years and as referenced in the motion, Ms Forsén herself has urged the industry to stop using it.

Speaking to WIRED magazine in 2019, she said she was “really proud” of the picture, saying: “I don’t understand but I think I’ve made some good.”

But after the release of a documentary titled Losing Lena, which spearheaded the effort to encourage computer science to move on from the image, she said: “I retired from modelling a long time ago.

“It’s time I retired from tech, too. We can make a simple change today that creates a lasting change for tomorrow. Let’s commit to losing me.”
Pivotal role

Ms Forsén, now 73, is now a retired grandmother living in Sweden.

In 1997, the former model was presented with a wooden mantel clock - dedicated to “The First Lady of the Internet” - by the Society for Imaging Science and Technology in recognition of her pivotal role in shaping the digital world.

The Playboy photograph of her wearing nothing but a feathered sun hat, boots, stockings and a pink boa was taken when she was just 21.

It shot to tech world fame when a copy turned up at the University of Southern California’s Signal and Image Processing Institute, where Alexander Sawchuk was looking for a new picture to test his and his team’s latest compression algorithm.

Ms Forsén’s picture became the perfect candidate with its colours and textures and so the image of the young model became an industry standard which was replicated countless times. The WIRED article refers to Lena as “the patron saint of JPEGs”.

The IEEE’s decision comes after the scientific journal Nature blocked the Lena image in all of its research journals in 2018.

In an unsigned editorial, the publisher explained the reason behind the decision, saying: “We believe that the history of the Lena image clashes with the extensive efforts to promote women undertaking higher education in science and engineering.”

[Frank Cox]

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada...rtel-shootings

'Like a cartel:' Shootings point to turf war over rights to screen South Indian films
Shootings come amid an effort to ensure these films are only shown in a select group of smaller, independent theatres

The day Thomas Sajan was expecting to see a South Indian action epic at a theatre in British Columbia, a spate of shootings thousands of kilometres away disrupted his plans.

Sajan, a self-described South Indian film fanatic, said he had been waiting months to see Malaikottai Vaaliban, a blockbuster Malayalam-language film about an aging warrior who reigns over a vast desert.

Hours before the scheduled showtime in late January, Cineplex sent a message saying the screening had been cancelled and the company would be issuing a refund “due to circumstances outside our control.”

Sajan, who moved to Surrey, B.C., from Kerala in southern India in 2017, said he was “heartbroken.”

“I was really sad and we were never told why,” he said in a phone interview earlier this month.

But the events that forced the cancellation soon became more clear.

Earlier in the day, police in Ontario reported shootings at four theatres in the Greater Toronto Area, which had been planning to show Malaikottai Vaaliban. Windows were shattered in some locations, but no injuries were reported.

York Regional Police said this month that while the drive-by shootings in their area remained under investigation, they believe the incidents were targeted and involved the same suspect.

For Sajan and Saleem Padinharkkara, who distributes South Indian films in Canada, those reports did not come as a shock.

Padinharkkara, who lives in Ontario and is the founder of film distribution company KW Talkies, alleged that there is an ongoing campaign to prevent popular South Indian movies from appearing in major Canadian theatre chains like Cineplex.

He claimed there is a group of distributors trying to ensure that these films are only shown in a select group of smaller, independent theatres, which charge higher ticket prices than large chains like Cineplex or Landmark Cinemas.

This, he alleged, was part of an effort to safeguard higher profits by controlling the market.

For example, he said Cineplex tickets can cost anywhere between $13 to $16 but people can pay up to $30 per ticket to watch a South Indian movie at a smaller theatre.

“It’s like a cartel,” added Padinharkkara, who said he has personally received threats for trying to distribute rights to South Indian movies to certain theatres.

“It’s disheartening. It’s soul destroying. I’ve lost money too. There’s a set of theatres in the GTA that are benefiting from these attacks. For me, it’s very blatant what’s happening but … there’s nobody talking about what’s happening.”

Padinharkkara said that cancellations, like those that affected Malaikottai Vaaliban, result in “a big loss” for the distributor.

“There is no way he is going to recover his money and movies have a shelf life.”

The Movie Theatre Association of Canada wrote in a statement that it “was aware of various incidents that have occurred at member theatre locations” and “it has been tremendously frustrating that criminal activity has prevented theatres from safely playing certain content.”

The association has had “productive meetings with Public Safety Canada” and it “is working closely with both local authorities and the federal government to raise awareness,” the statement added.

Public Safety Canada did not comment on the shootings.

Cineplex’s chief executive Ellis Jacob said in February that the company lost money due to the shootings but it remains determined to offer international programming, which makes up 10 per cent of its annual box office revenues compared with four per cent at many of its counterparts.

“We are working very closely with the authorities,” Jacob said, noting that the most important thing is the safety of staff and moviegoers.

Canadian interest in South Indian cinema has been rising.

Sajan linked that in part to the pandemic, when people were searching for a wider variety of content to stream with theatres shuttered. He also cited the growing numbers of immigrants from southern India.

Padinharkkara said that in 2010 rights to distribute a South Indian movie in Canada cost between $10,000 and $20, 000. Now those rights can cost up to $200,000.

Sajan has started a petition signed by about 500 people urging the federal government, the RCMP, Cineplex, Landmark Cinemas and others to take action.

“These criminal activities not only undermine the cultural diversity represented by South Indian cinema but also limit the choices available to movie lovers in Canada,” his petition states.

“The attacks and intimidation tactics against theatres daring to show South Indian movies demonstrate a blatant disregard for the principles of fair competition and freedom of artistic expression.”