Adult Swim Announces Global Expansion Plans In Latin America With A Dedicated Channel

Warner Bros. Discovery announces the launch of the [adult swim] brand in Latin America, which will soon be added to its solid offer of pay TV channels, as a linear channel that will operate 24 hours a day. 

The brand, which is already one of the biggest entertainment successes among adult animation fans around the world, joins the company's portfolio to conquer fans in Latin America and as part of WBD's expansion and diversification process, strengthening its robust content offer that combines pay TV, streaming, cinema, games and digital media, among other formats. 

[adult swim] is known for creative storytelling, acid humor, and engaging adult storytelling. Starting at the end of October, through the pay-TV service, fans will have 24-hour access to a solid offering of content that includes iconic animations that have earned the attention of passionate fans around the world. In addition, it will have exclusive content with animated stories of heroes and villains from the DC franchise; the Toonami block, with exciting anime that is gaining more and more popularity among Latin American fans; and the entire Warner Play universe, with the main gameplays, and the latest news from the world of electronic games, and geek culture. 

"At Warner Bros. Discovery, we constantly work to connect with Latin American consumers with new proposals that keep up with the evolution of the audience and bring us closer to what this audience is passionate about and considers relevant," said Vera Buzanello, Brazil Country Manager. and Head of Distribution for Warner Bros. Discovery for Latin America.  "With [adult swim], we strengthen our pay television offer with a robust proposal that will add a lot of value to our portfolio of brands," he concluded. 

“[adult swim] is a brand that has been expanding globally with great force, driven by creative and high-quality content, with new trends in animation, and disruptive programming aimed at adult audiences.  Having a completely new space dedicated to this type of content allows us to offer Latin American fans the best in terms of animation, with creative and innovative stories and acclaimed productions throughout the digital ecosystem for the Latin American audience”, reinforces Pablo Zuccarino, Senior Vice President & General Manager for Kids & Animation at Warner Bros. Discovery, Latin America.

New Series Alert: Night Of Doom Coming Soon To Star Life

Star Life, a general entertainment home to various Bollywood entertainment from StarPlus like Anupama and Not Without My Family and second English dubbed channel in Africa was reported to allocate a  picked up rights to supernatural horror, Night Of Doom (Qayamat Ki Raat) as teased in 2021.

The series was produced by Twist Of Fate's very own Ekta Kapoor and features Karishma Tanna, Vivek Dahiya, Nirbhay Wadhwa, Saurish Singh Athwal and Madhurima Tuli. It will be the first supernatural series in a long while as the last one A Magical Love Story which was launched in mid 2021.

Set in the year of 1993, the story begins with a newly wedded couple, Suhasini and Mahendar going to a Ram temple at Ramnamgarh to hand over Suhasini's wedding chain to the idol of Lord Rama and receive the deity's blessings. The train stops at the station and Mahendar's loyal driver Birju comes to fetch them and to drive them till the temple. Not realising that Birju is possessed, they follow him. Suhasini and Mahendar enter the temple when suddenly, Mahendar recalls that they have forgotten the wedding chain in the car so Mahendar goes to fetch it, asking Suhasini to stay here. Meanwhile, Suhasini witnesses strange eerie occurrences in the temple premises while exploring the region which includes absence of a bell as well as any idol of Lord Rama inside the temple and passing of a cat out of nowhere. She trips off a door and falls down the stairs that lead into the temple's basement that happens to be a Tantrik named Kalasur's lair. As soon as Kalasur sees her, he gladly welcomes her inside and offers to spend the night with her and make love. This frightens Suhasini and she yells for help. This is followed by a struggle by Suhasini to escape the Tantrik's clutches and a duel between him and her husband Mahendar. Suhasini runs away screaming for help. While fighting with the Tantrik, Mahendar loses consciousness and Kalasur shape-shifts into Mahendar's form.

Meanwhile, Suhasini reaches the palace of Thakur Prithvi Singh Suryavanshi and asks them to save her husband from Kalasur. Just then, Kalasur arrives there in Mahendar's disguise and Suhasini, scared out of her wits, pleads everybody to get the Tantrik at the temple arrested. As everyone goes in search of the Tantrik, Kalasur takes Suhasini in a bedroom inside the palace and tries making love to her. But luckily Suhasini sees the reflection of the Tantrik in the glass ceiling and pushes him away. As she reaches for the door to exit the house, the Thakur's family returns with the real Mahendar, a priest and few village men because they had found an unconscious Mahendar at the temple instead of the Tantrik. The priest traps Kalasur inside a circular ring of holy ash on the floor. The Tantrik still doesn't accept defeat. He keeps insisting on making love to Suhasini which irks Mahendar to no extent. He threatens to burn Kalasur into ashes, but the latter remarks that his ashes would rise in air and coalesce to resurrect him. Next, Mahendar threatens to bury the Tantrik alive, but he says that his skeleton would rise from underneath the ground to revive him. Mahendar then strangles Kalasur and chokes him, but Kalasur manages to get an upper hand and lifts Mahendar up in the air grabbing his throat. Suhasini requests Kalasur to leave Mahendar unharmed but he pays no heed and insists on having a one-night stand with her. This invokes the ferocity and strength inside Suhasini who lifts up a villager's axe and chops off Kalasur's right arm that had grabbed Mahendar's throat. Next, she cuts the Tantrik's head off. As a result, the beheaded Tantrik curses Suhasini's family that since he couldn't make love to Suhasini, no woman from her family must consummate her marriage hereafter or else death would befall on her. He also remarks that Suhasini would never know the reason why he had chosen her and wanted to make love to her. The priest then orders Lakha, a villager to lock the Tantrik's arm, head and body separately and hide them in different places so that the Tantrik can never assimilate his body parts together and resurrect himself.

Night Of Doom premiered on StarPlus in 2018 and was met with positive reception for its gripping storyline, use of the cast members and ability to balance between good and evil. It managed to pull 5.8 million viewers in its opening week in India.

From the 4th of September, Imlie and My Desire will be halved on Star Life ahead of the series rollout. My Desire will air from 20:00 and Imlie wiil follow 30 minutes later at 20:30 with Night Of Doom to occupy the 22:00 timeslot.

Reminder: ROK GH Will Close On DStv And GOtv Across Africa By 31 August 2023

ROK is a general entertainment channel operated by Nigerian film company ROK Studios that produce a selection of content such as Bloodline and Festac Town. Prior to the channel's inception, the company ROK Studios had been garnering popularity for its productions.

By 2018, ROK Studios allocated two more channels to the DStv platform, ROK 2 and ROK 3 (now ROK GH). ROK 2 was viewed as another Mzansi Wethu rehashing content to more consumers while as ROK GH (formerly ROK 3) was spun off from the first producing content from Ghana.

After 5 years on air, MultiChoice has decided to end carriage of ROK GH with further content likely to be distributed on ROK and ROK 2. This comes after it was reported that Maisha Magic Movies would be departing South Africa both of which are slated to go dark by the end of August.

MultiChoice has yet to issue out a statement regarding the cancellation of ROK GH. But if we had to guess similar to Maisha Magic Movies (in SA) and Novela Magic, the channel was struggling to garner traction and brands like ROK and Africa Magic probably edged them out.

Another could be that ROK Studios (if not MultiChoice) is cutting back on content spend and possible streamlining. Therefore reducing the attention seen on their linear platforms as seen with various broadcasters in the African market underwent.

Reminder: Maisha Magic Movies Will Close On DStv By 31 August 2023, Zee Zonke Will Be Added Soon

In 2021, MultiChoice and M-Net unveiled a new local movie channel, Maisha Magic Movies. The channel was tailor made for East African audiences particularly Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Malawi while as being viewable in areas MultiChoice operates.

Maisha Magic Movies would be used as a platform to promote first run productions from East Africa alongside content already viewed on Maisha Magic East and Pearl Magic. Some content to have been viewed on the channel include like 94 Terror, Damu Moja and Freedom Movie.

After two years, MultiChoice has decided to call it quits for Maisha Magic Movies with the channel to remain on the platform until the end of August. At the time of publishing, neither MultiChoice and M-Net could provide a statement regarding the removal of the brand.

From what we can gather, this change is only applicable to consumers in South Africa as it remains operational in other parts of Africa. We assume similar to Novela Magic, the channel was struggling to garner traction as seen with Mzansi Bioskop and Africa Magic Epic. 

Another contributing factor would have to be Zee Zonke, since last year MultiChoice had been battling with transponder constraints so they'd often need to remove channels in order to launch another channel. Maisha Magic Movies being obsolete would be replaced by Zee Zonke.

As both incorporate a local element into the lineup, Zee Zonke is a Zulu dubbed entertainment channel similar to eMedia Investments eExtra and ePlesier would dub various international shows in local languages as opposed to producing original content like Maisha Magic Movies.

Zee Zonke was slated to launch on the platform earlier in the month but was pushed to September so Maisha Magic Movies' sacrifice won't be in vain. Unlike the movie channel, Zee Zonke might be viewable to more DStv customers like Family and Access.

As crazy as this switcheroo appears to some, they had attempted to phase out something factual and entertaining as Da Vinci for toddler filtered brand like Moonbug and another instance was with MTV Hits when MultiChoice opted to kill pop for some smooth Jazz on Qwest TV.

Maisha Magic Movies In ROA

As mentioned from our findings, it appears the channel will remain operational in other countries. Considering the channel was made available to Access in parts of East Africa and it's socials were redirected to Maisha Magic and Pearl Magic. It wouldn't be shocking if more regions opted to discontinue carriage of the channel if not the whole of Africa.

Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? (NES)

Similar to the 1985 game Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? , the player plays as a secret agent for the Acme Detective Agency, and has to use research books to crack the clues given to them on where the crook went to, and also decode the physical attributes or interests of the crook based on other clues.

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