Reliance Big Entertainment, India’s largest entertainment conglom, will spend $1 billion over the next 18 months building its businesses in India and globally.
This marks the company’s most concerted effort to be seen as a movie company operating on a world scale. At a glitzy Cannes event Friday with ICM topper Jeff Berg on hand, Reliance pulled back the curtains on a production slate of 69 Indian-sourced movies with budgets ranging from $1 million to $40 million, and production pacts with two production shingles. The company is expected to follow Sunday with further announcement about relationships and production deals involving Hollywood talent such as Will Smith, Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Bruce Willis. “It is time for Indian companies to step up and take on the world,” Reliance CEO Amit Khanna said. While the deals and spending plans are unquestionably ambitious, the company has equally stratospheric backers. Reliance Big Entertainment is part of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, a giant conglom with interests spanning telecoms, energy and retail.
The deals cited Friday included a two-film pact with Vinod Chopra Films, the shingle controlled by Vinod Vidhu Chopra, and a six-film deal with Excel Entertainment that includes “Don II,” a Shah Rukh Khan-starring sequel to 2006 hit “Don.”
The Chopra deal provides two of the largest films on its slate, the U.S.-set, English-language crimer “Broken Horses,” and “Taalismaan,” a fantasy romancer based on famous 19th century novel “Chandrakanta” and helmed by Ram Madhvani. Other talent deals give Reliance two pics with Shyam Benegal, four with Madhur Bhandarkar, three with Vivek Agnihotri and two with Sudhir Mishra. Slate spans nine languages including English, Hindi and South Asian tongues. Reliance Big Entertainment prexy Rajesh Sawhney said the $1 billion will not only go into content creation, but will help significantly boost development of the company’s film distribution and infrastructure. It is opening its own distribution offices on the East and West coasts of the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Malaysia and Australia, to be staffed with mix of locals and Indian film specialists. In the last year it has acquired some 250 cinema screens in the U.S., Nepal, Mauritius and Malaysia. Further acquisitions are possible. “We will market ourselves aggressively,” newly appointed creative topper Prasoon Joshi said. “You can’t reach out by simply putting your films in (London’s) Odeon Leicester Square and expect to reach beyond the non-resident Indians.” But all the execs were careful to play down expectations that Indian films will achieve any kind of overnight crossover sensation. Within India, the company’s distribution strategy amounts to content availability “any time, anywhere,” according to Khanna. It will continue to expand its multiplex screen count to more than 400 from 160 at present by the end of 2009. Unlike other digital cinema initiatives in India, Reliance Big Entertainment and its stock-market listed Adlabs unit, are rolling out fully DCI-compliant 2k systems.Simultaneously, it is building out its home entertainment and online platforms, through building of a video rental retail chain and further development of its Netflix-style mail-order DVD rental service. The video service is already the Indian distrib for Universal, and Sawhney said a second deal with another Hollywood studio would be inked within coming days.The Cannes glitz contrasts starkly with Reliance’s previous approach. It has kept a low profile and quietly bought studios, hired global talent and tech companies such as April’s acquisition of DTS’s Digital Imaging unit. It already controls India’s largest film processing lab and the largest FM radio circuit. It will launch a DTH satellite TV platform in the next months and is hatching plans for 20-plus new TV channels of its own.
Nevertheless, company has attracted attention. In February it saw iconic investor George Soros pay $100 million for a 3% stake in the entertainment unit, giving it an implied value of over $3 billion.
Asia entertainment news from Variety - varietyasiaonline.com
This marks the company’s most concerted effort to be seen as a movie company operating on a world scale. At a glitzy Cannes event Friday with ICM topper Jeff Berg on hand, Reliance pulled back the curtains on a production slate of 69 Indian-sourced movies with budgets ranging from $1 million to $40 million, and production pacts with two production shingles. The company is expected to follow Sunday with further announcement about relationships and production deals involving Hollywood talent such as Will Smith, Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Bruce Willis. “It is time for Indian companies to step up and take on the world,” Reliance CEO Amit Khanna said. While the deals and spending plans are unquestionably ambitious, the company has equally stratospheric backers. Reliance Big Entertainment is part of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, a giant conglom with interests spanning telecoms, energy and retail.
The deals cited Friday included a two-film pact with Vinod Chopra Films, the shingle controlled by Vinod Vidhu Chopra, and a six-film deal with Excel Entertainment that includes “Don II,” a Shah Rukh Khan-starring sequel to 2006 hit “Don.”
The Chopra deal provides two of the largest films on its slate, the U.S.-set, English-language crimer “Broken Horses,” and “Taalismaan,” a fantasy romancer based on famous 19th century novel “Chandrakanta” and helmed by Ram Madhvani. Other talent deals give Reliance two pics with Shyam Benegal, four with Madhur Bhandarkar, three with Vivek Agnihotri and two with Sudhir Mishra. Slate spans nine languages including English, Hindi and South Asian tongues. Reliance Big Entertainment prexy Rajesh Sawhney said the $1 billion will not only go into content creation, but will help significantly boost development of the company’s film distribution and infrastructure. It is opening its own distribution offices on the East and West coasts of the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Malaysia and Australia, to be staffed with mix of locals and Indian film specialists. In the last year it has acquired some 250 cinema screens in the U.S., Nepal, Mauritius and Malaysia. Further acquisitions are possible. “We will market ourselves aggressively,” newly appointed creative topper Prasoon Joshi said. “You can’t reach out by simply putting your films in (London’s) Odeon Leicester Square and expect to reach beyond the non-resident Indians.” But all the execs were careful to play down expectations that Indian films will achieve any kind of overnight crossover sensation. Within India, the company’s distribution strategy amounts to content availability “any time, anywhere,” according to Khanna. It will continue to expand its multiplex screen count to more than 400 from 160 at present by the end of 2009. Unlike other digital cinema initiatives in India, Reliance Big Entertainment and its stock-market listed Adlabs unit, are rolling out fully DCI-compliant 2k systems.Simultaneously, it is building out its home entertainment and online platforms, through building of a video rental retail chain and further development of its Netflix-style mail-order DVD rental service. The video service is already the Indian distrib for Universal, and Sawhney said a second deal with another Hollywood studio would be inked within coming days.The Cannes glitz contrasts starkly with Reliance’s previous approach. It has kept a low profile and quietly bought studios, hired global talent and tech companies such as April’s acquisition of DTS’s Digital Imaging unit. It already controls India’s largest film processing lab and the largest FM radio circuit. It will launch a DTH satellite TV platform in the next months and is hatching plans for 20-plus new TV channels of its own.
Nevertheless, company has attracted attention. In February it saw iconic investor George Soros pay $100 million for a 3% stake in the entertainment unit, giving it an implied value of over $3 billion.
Asia entertainment news from Variety - varietyasiaonline.com