ACORN TV
Programming from several countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Ireland, New Zealand, and UK.

Five years ago, Over the holiday weekend, the Los Angeles County Health Department requested that film, television, and music productions consider pausing work for a few weeks to avoid increasing the spread of Covid-19 as the pandemic surges again in California. Most Film & TV Productions will extend hiatus through at least Mid-January due to Covid-19 surge.

Cinema admissions in France, Europe’s biggest movie market, plunged 70% in 2020, compared with 2019, decimated by Covid-19, which saw French cinemas shutter for 176 days this year, France’s National Film Board (Cnc) announced on Wednesday. In such straightened circumstances, U.S. movies monopolized France’s Top 5, with best scores being punched by Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” (2.3 million admissions), “1917” (2.2 million) and “Sonic the Hedgehog” (2.1 million). No French film made the Top 5 – unusual for France, which boasts the strongest local industry of any major market in Europe.

Hong Kong is to provide cash subsidies to cinema operators as the city buckles under the pressure of a fourth wave of the Covid-19 outbreak. Cinemas were ordered to close in December, causing them to miss the lucrative Christmas and New Year holiday seasons. A one-off payment of Hk$100,000 will be paid to each screen at a licensed commercial cinema operating in November, the government announced on Wednesday. The maximum per circuit is Hk$3 million. A total of Hk$21 million ($2.7 million) is expected to be paid out.

Chinese director Guan Hu is riding high right now: Despite languishing in government censorship purgatory for over a year, his patriotic war epic “The Eight Hundred” has risen to become the highest grossing film in the world in 2020, with sales of $461 million. His next confirmed move? Guan is executive producer and supervisor for the new production “The Revolutionary.” The project will be a family affair — his wife, the actress Liang Jing, is also set to executive produce alongside him. Backed by Enlight Media, it is scheduled for a high-profile July 1 debut.