Category: Hindi

MUMBAI: Dabangg has proved to be the biggest opening day, opening weekend and first week grosser of all times with the box office figure of Rs 830 million from about 2000 screens.

The film has recovered the distributors’ investment in all territories including the cost of prints and publicity. Its first share at approximately Rs 460 million is more than the total share of Wanted which would be around Rs 350 million.

Dabangg continues its golden run in the second weekend. Facing a minor drop in the collections on Friday, it went on to consolidate its hold on the box office over Saturday and Sunday, grossing around Rs 240 million for three days.

The new release, Life Express, fails to generate any interest among moviegoers with no show status at most cinemas due to lack of audience.
 

MUMBAI: The Enlighten Film Society, in association with Brook Bond Taj Mahal, honoured Shabana Azmi with the Taj Enlighten Tareef Award for her outstanding contribution to cinema.

Not only that, the organisation held a retrospective of films of Azmi in which some of her best films including Ankur, Ek Doctor Ki Maut, Godmother, Dharavi and Fire were screened every Sunday from 5 September at Cinemax.

Said an excited Azmi to the media, “Today, I am getting the award which has been received by so many distinguished luminaries before me, whose work I have really admired. I feel humbled and thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

The Taj Enlighten Tareef Award has earlier been presented to Amitabh Bachchan, Mrinal Sen and screenplay writer and lyricist Javed Akhtar.

MUMBAI: Drew Barrymore, known for her role in Charlie‘s Angels, will soon make her Bollywood debut in a film titled The Lifestyle being made by Santosh Kumar Jain, an industrialist.

Confirming Barrymore‘s involvement, Jain says, “I really liked her performance in Charlie‘s Angels and decided to cast her in my film. Fortunately, she liked the script and agreed instantly.”

Jain, who is also a well-known film distributor, is making his debut as a writer and director with this film.

“Barrymore will certainly be coming to India, but we can only confirm the date once everything is finalised,” avers Jain, who says the budget of the film would be anywhere between Rs1.5 billion.

The film will go on floors in November this year and is expected to release in 2012.

The director also claims that it would be India‘s first film to be shot in stereo scopic IMAX 3D version.

The film that has Barrymore playing the role of a foreigner tells the story of three women from different walks of life, trying to assert their identities. The other two will be top Indian actresses. While a major part of the film would be shot in the US, some scenes would be shot in Haridwar and Benaras.

Other Hollywood stars who have starred in Bollywood films include Shakira who will play goddess Kaali in a film called Kaali- The Warrior Goddess, Nicolas Cage who is playing the lead in Vidhu Vinod Chopra‘s Broken Horses, Sylvester Stallone, Brandon Routh who also starred in Akshay Kumar starrer Kambakkht Ishq, while Ben Kingsley made his Bollywood debut with Teen Patti.
 

MUMBAI: Walkwater Films’ Tere Bin Laden is making its presence felt in the US. The movie is set to attract the mainstream American space as it is invited to open the Friars Club Comedy Film Festival in New York that will go underway from 24 to 29 September.

Both director Abhishek Sharma and lead star Ali Zafar will attend the event. Said Festival director Susannah Gora, “It is an honour that an Indian comedy will open the festival this year and it is a rare achievement for Indian cinema in general.”
 
The Friars Club, an institution founded in 1904, has members including the Marx Brothers, Frank Sinatra and Lucille Ball to Billy Crystal and Jerry Seinfeld. The club is famous for its annual ‘roasts‘ of iconic celebrities. This year Samuel Jackson will ‘roast‘ Quentin Tarantino at the festival.

In addition, a lifetime achievement award will be presented to Jerry Lewis.
 

NEW DELHI: A convention of all the Regional Cinemas to address the various problems faced by the regional film industry will be organised sometime during January in Kolkata by the Kolkata Chapter of The Film & TV Producers Guild of India.

In the meeting in Kolkata recently chaired by eminent Producer/Director Gautam Ghose, members applauded the sincere efforts made by the Guild in redressing film industries various issues. Moni of Venkatesh Films expressed the concern of the TV programmers in Kolkata and said all TV producers had evinced interest in joining the Guild. 

Earlier, Guild Treasurer Manish Goswami briefed the members about the activities of the Guild and Secretary General Supran Sen expressed gratitude to Ghose and others for reposing confidence in Guild.

The Hyderabad chapter is also being launched soon, with a sizeable number of eminent filmmakers from Hyderabad including Nagarjuna having joined.
 

MUMBAI: Fearing disturbance on 24 September, the day when the Ayodhya verdict is expected to be announced, Sajid Nadiadwala has postponed the release of his Ranbir Kapoor-Priyanka Chopra starrer Anjaana Anjaani to 1 October.

The decision was reportedly taken at a closed-door meeting by producers Sajid Nadiadwala and Eros International as well as director Siddharth Anand. Said an insider at Nadiadwala Grandsons, “Our prints for overseas markets like Australia, America and the UK has already been sent, but last morning after a meeting we decided to postpone the release to 1 October.”

This means that Anjaana Anjaani is destined to take on the Rajnikant-Aishwarya Rai starrer Robot that is also releasing on the same day. Fox Star Studios’ Khichdi–The Movie will release along with it.

Averred Fox Star Studios CEO Vijay Singh, “We will release Khichdi on 1 October. The response from the audiences who have seen the film is extremely positive.”

Incidentally, Kumar Mangat‘s Aakrosh that was supposed to release on
1 October has been postponed for a 8 October release.

This development gives Dabangg another week to rule at the box-office without any meaningful competition.

MUMBAI: Indian conglomerate Sahara India Pariwar is being backed by James Bond producers in a bid estimated at $2 billion (Rs 94 billion) to rescue the beleaguered Hollywood studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.

The Broccoli family, which runs EON Productions, has combined with Sahara to salvage the debt-laden studio, according to a source familiar with the development.

Barbara Broccoli and her stepbrother Michael G Wilson will share an equity stake in MGM if the Sahara bid sails through.

“On mutual interest discussions are on, but it is too early to comment on the issue,” Sahara India Pariwar head of corporate communications Abhijit Sarkar said in an e-mailed statement. He, however, refused to divulge anything on the involvement of the Broccoli family in the bid.

Subrata Roy-promoted Sahara Group, which has diversified business interests ranging from finance to media and infrastructure and housing, recently bid for soccer club Liverpool. Sahara owns IPL franchise Pune Warriors and sponsors India‘s cricket and hockey teams.

Sahara‘s bid comes in the wake of MGM creditors voting this week on a pre-packaged bankruptcy plan to restructure the company‘s debt. The plan involves a merger with Hollywood producer Spyglass Entertainment.

MGM lenders have given the studio time till 29 October to restructure its $4 billion debt.

BANGALORE: Andhra Pradesh (AP) based Geetha Arts and Kwan have joined hands to form an entertainment marketing firm, ‘Artists Alliance’. Artists Alliance will replicate Kwan‘s business model in southern cinema, working in the areas of celebrity management, movie marketing, in-film placements, casting, television and event sponsorships.

The Artists Alliance feels that marketers need an agency that can understand, appreciate and leverage local sensibilities followed by flawless execution in order to add the magic of movies and entertainment to their campaigns. 

Beyond the top two-three towns in each of the southern states, Bollywood content consumption is very low. Often the brand demand is localised and high impact solutions.

Markets like Tamil Nadu and AP offer big opportunities because these states have their own distinct cultural and linguistic identities that will call for discrete approaches and methods.

Another factor is the unorganised functioning of the entertainment industry in South India and hence, leveraging of brand endorsement is almost absent.
 

MUMBAI: The pan India theatrical rights of Sun Pictures‘ Robot, the Hindi dubbed version of the Tamil film Endhiran, lies with Gemini Circuit.

To have a wide distribution of the Rajnikant- Aishwarya Rai sci-fi, Gemini has sold the film distribution rights to different distributors.

Going by trade sources, Shringar Films has bagged the rights for Bombay territory, Mukta Arts has procured Robot for Delhi UP and East Punjab, the Eastern Circuit is with Venkatesh Films while the film would be distributed by 52 Weeks Entertainment in CP Berar and by Red Sun Enterprises in CI. A.A. Films hold the rights of the film in Rajasthan.

The film is set to release with 2250 prints worldwide with over 300 screens overseas on 1 October.
 

MUMBAI: Crest Animation Studios has associated with Computational Research Laboratories (CRL) for rendering Alpha and Omega, India‘s first 3D stereoscopic animation feature developed by it.

The film Alpha and Omega that released on 17 September was completed in a record time using Eka supercomputer at CRL, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Sons.

This is the first time an Indian studio has taken on the top global animation studios on their own turf by releasing the movie in screens across US and Europe.
The film also marks yet another milestone in the Indian animation industry. Combining its own infrastructure, Crest used the high-performance computing infrastructure at CRL to accelerate its rendering schedule by about five months. 

CRL‘s supercomputer Eka, which was used in this project, is one of the world‘s fastest and most versatile supercomputers. It can perform more than 133 trillion sustained calculations per second.

The super computer made it possible for Crest to reduce its rendering times per frame by about 50 per cent and increase throughput by approximately 500 per cent without proportional cost implications.

Says Crest Animation Studios CEO A K Madhavan, “Rendering of animation movie is a very compute intensive process. It also tends to be very time consuming and costly. With our own infrastructure, it looked tough to manage our release schedule for September 2010. CRL‘s strong expertise in delivering on-demand high performance computing (HPC) and their dedicated support services proved to be a cost-effective alternative.”

CRL Chairman S Ramadorai avers, “CRL‘s High Performance Cloud provides one of the fastest rendering infrastructures available globally. CRL has been able to quickly ramp up and down the infrastructure to best suit a customer‘s immediate needs.

Soon, several Hollywood flicks would be powered by an Indian – for the first time, a machine – supercomputer Eka. CRL is already talking to studios in Europe and US regarding its supercomputer