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Canal+ Posts Big H1 Gains Thanks To MultiChoice Acquisition

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The $2B acquisition of Africa’s MultiChoice has helped Canal+ post higher half-year revenues and earnings.

Unaudited total group revenues saw revenues grow 40% to €4.29 billion ($4.88 billion), though without MultiChoice the growth shrinks to just 1.4% year-on-year compared to 2025’s €3.07B.

Similarly, adjusted EBIT (before exceptional items) was up 68% to €433M, from €257M, and had a 10.1% margin. Excluding MultiChoice, the number drops to 13% growth.

The market update comes just hours after London-listed Canal+ pledged more than €980M to French and European cinema over five years in a fresh deal with French entertainment bodies. The news was heralded as of unprecedented length for the Paris-based pay-TV giant. 

Canal+ this morning revealed it had hit its target of €250M in synergies resulting from its takeover of African pay-TV giant MultiChoice last year.

The company has sought to significantly reduce costs in Africa since the buyout, with streamer Showmax discontinued earlier this year in one move that shocked the local industry. The H1 figures reveal Showmax made a €52M loss in H1 of 2025 on revenues of €23M.

“Following the acquisition of MultiChoice, our increased scale is starting to deliver the benefits we expected,” said Canal+ CEO Maxime Saada. “We have achieved half of our €250M synergies target and remain well on track for the year, and we confirm our full-year and medium-term guidance.”

Studiocanal

Canal+’s production arm, Studiocanal, had an “excellent six months on and off screen,” according to Saada, who pointed theatrical successes such as Guru in France and Pressure in the US, and the biggest film deal at Cannes 2026, for The Midnight Library, which sold to Paramount for $36M.

The content production, distribution and other segment, which includes Studiocanal and streamer Dailymotion, posted revenues of €356M, up 9.9% YoY. This accounted for 7.8% of Canal+’s overall revenues, down from 9.3% last year. Adjusted EBIT was €28M, which was 3% lower than 2025.

“With a slate including Paddington 4, Zack Snyder’s remake of Escape From New York, our first major South African film production, The Road Home, and Danny Boyle’s Ink, Studiocanal’s momentum looks set to continue,” he added.

Back at group level, Saada pointed a systematic review of costs in France last year 2025 was benefitting finances, along with “strong D2C subscriber acquisition and lower churn, plus an ongoing shift to streaming in Poland.

In Africa, adjusted EBIT was up 9% excluding MultiChoice, driven by pay-TV growth among other factors.

Canal+ said its “turnaround” of MultiChoice was underway and pointed to a long-term rights deal for the Premier Soccer League in South Africa, the 2027 men’s and 2029 women’s rugby world cups across sub-Saharan Africa and a production slate including The Road Home, Heist of Benin and a screen adaptation of bestselling novel Americanah

Subscriber acquisition was up 40% in MultiChoice countries compared to H1 2025 in MultiChoice countries, with June the best month “in a decade.” Adjusted EBIT at MultiChoice was up 160% to €143M, from €55M a year ago. This was primarily put down to synergies of €120M, including the impact of Showmax’s discontinuation.

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Mike Flanagan In Talks To EP Henry Cavill Amazon ‘Warhammer 40,000’ Series

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With his series take of Stephen King’s Carrie set to hit Prime Video on Oct. 7, Mike Flanagan will be back in business with Amazon MGM Studios soon again for the series adaptation of British miniature war-game Warhammer 40,000. Deadline hears that Flanagan is in talks to join the series as an EP. It’s still being determined if the Doctor Sleep filmmaker will be showrunning the Henry Cavill passion project.

Amazon MGM Studios acquired global rights to Games Workshop’s Warhammer 40,000 in December 2024 for Cavill to EP and star in.

Warhammer 40,000 is set in the far future, where humanity stands at the edge of what might be its brightest future, or its darkest age. The threats to humankind’s empire are many: traitors driven by the fires of ambition, alien empires sworn to reclaim the stars and the corruption of reality by malevolent gods.

Back in March, Flanagan inked a multi-year overall deal with Amazon MGM Studios to develop and produce original series for the studio, the first in the pact being Carrie. In TV, Flanagan has served as creator, writer, director and showrunner of The Fall of the House of UsherMidnight MassThe Haunting of Bly ManorThe Midnight Club and The Haunting of Hill House.

Flanagan wrote, directed, edited and produced eight feature films, including Stephen King adaptations Doctor Sleep and Gerald’s Game, as well as Ouija: Origin of EvilHushBefore I WakeOculusAbsentia and 2024’s The Life of Chuck, which won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. He is writing, directing and producing The Exorcist: Martyrs for Blumhouse and Universal Pictures, which stars Scarlett Johansson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, John Leguizamo, Diane Lane, Carla Cugino and Laurence Fishburne.

Vertigo Entertainment’s Roy Lee and Natalie Viscuso partnered with Cavill to secure the Warhammer 40,000 IP before they took it to Amazon. Vertigo executive produces with Cavill and GAW’s Andy Smillie and Max Bottrill alongside Amazon MGM Studios.

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‘Star Wars’ Franchise Visual Effects Workers Unionize With IATSE

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A group of U.S.-based visual effects workers across the Star Wars franchise productions have organized with IATSE.

The new bargaining unit, announced Tuesday, includes U.S. workers who contribute to titles including, but not limited to, The Mandalorian & GroguAhsoka, and Star Wars: Starfighter, per the union. These VFX professionals, who “unanimously supported” union membership, will now collectively bargain with the studio on their first contract.

“These workers help bring some of the most ambitious stories in entertainment to life, and they deserve a meaningful voice in shaping their working conditions,” IATSE International President Matthew D. Loeb said in a statement. “We are proud to welcome these visual effects professionals into our proud Union.”

The latest round of Star Wars VFX workers join several other cohorts of their colleagues across Disney‘s Marvel Studios, Walt Disney Pictures and the Avatar franchise who ratified their first IATSE contracts with the studio last year.

IATSE represents 170,000 technicians, artisans and craftspersons in the entertainment industry, including live events, motion picture and television production, broadcast, and trade shows in the United States and Canada.

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Kent Broadhurst Dead: ‘Silver Bullet’ Actor Was 86

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Kent Broadhurst, the character actor who appeared in films including The Verdict, Silkwood and Silver Bullet and wrote the screenplay that led to Laura Linney’s first Emmy Award, has died. He was 86.

Broadhurst died May 20 at Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, according to a paid obituary. He lived for the past 63 years in a building on Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village.

The St. Louis native did lots of theater work during his lengthy career, making it to Broadway in revivals of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial in 1983 and A Doll’s House in 1997, and he wrote many plays as well.

Broadhurst might be best known for playing the father of the murdered best friend of Corey Haim’s Marty Coslaw in the Stephen King-scripted horror film Silver Bullet (1985).

In an interview for the DVD, he said he arrived at a park at about 2 a.m. for the scene in which his character is taken to his dead son. “The prop department had presented [director Dan Attias] with the corpse of the boy that was just embarrassing, it was unusable,” he recalled. “It looked like a window mannequin that had been smashed with a hammer and smeared with cranberry juice.

“I could see [Attias] was in such a quandary, so I said, ‘I think I can give you what you need and you won’t have to show anything of the terrible thing I’m confronted with.’ He was so grateful, he said, ‘Oh, that’s great. I’ll just keep the camera on you.’”

Broadhurst penned the screenplay for the 2001 Showtime telefilm Wild Iris, directed by Daniel Petrie. Linney stars as a widow who lives with her son (Emile Hirsch) and mother (Gena Rowlands) in a home that doubles as a bridal shop.

Linney received the Emmy for outstanding lead actress in a miniseries or a movie — it was the first of her nine Emmy career nominations and first of her four wins — while Rowlands was nominated as well.

Born in St. Louis on Feb. 4, 1940, James Kent Broadhurst graduated from the University of Nebraska and headed to New York, where he appeared off-Broadway opposite Marcia Wallace in The Fourth Wall in 1968, among many other plays.

He made his big-screen debut in Stuart Rosenberg’s Brubaker (1980), starring Robert Redford, then followed with turns in Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict (1982), starring Paul Newman, and Mike NicholsSilkwood (1983), starring Meryl Streep.

In the 1983 NBC miniseries Kennedy, starring Martin Sheen, Broadhurst portrayed Richard Paul Pavlick, the postal worker who was arrested after he stalked president-elect John F. Kennedy with the aim of assassinating him.

After appearing in Silver Bullet, which was based on King’s 1983 novella, Cycle of the Werewolf, he worked on another horror film taken from a novel written by King, The Dark Half (1993), directed by George A. Romero.

His résumé also included such films as Marshall Brickman’s Lovesick (1983), John Turturro’s Mac (1992), Luc Besson’s Léon: The Professional (1994), A Couch in New York (1996) and Boys Life 2 (1997) and TV guest spots on The Equalizer, Spenser: For Hire, Reasonable Doubts, Walker, Texas Ranger, Babylon 5, Law & Order and Law & Order: SVU.

In 2000, Broadhurst stepped in to provide the onstage narration as a hypnotherapist for a Dream Theater concert in New York that was recorded for the video album Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory.

His plays included They’re Coming to Make It Brighter, Lemons, The Eye of the Beholder and The Habitual Acceptance of the Near Enough; some bowed at the Humana Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville.

Broadhurst also was a painter who created more than 2,000 canvases, some of which have been exhibited at the Broadhurst Art Gallery (named for him) at the Stissing Center in Pine Plains, New York.

“Friends and colleagues often described him as a Renaissance man — thoughtful, intellectually generous and devoted to the arts in all their forms,” his paid obituary notes.

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