Category: Hindi

MUMBAI: After having coached several film stars and choreographed some of Bollywood‘s biggest films, Shiamak Davar is all set to helm a film. 

The film titled A Slumdog Millionaire Goes Dancing is to be produced by Percept Pictures.

Though Davar has been thinking of directing a film for a while, it’s no surprise that his first film revolves around dancing, he being a maser at that. The film is the story of a bunch of slum children being trained to participate in a dance competition.

Former Davar students like Shahid Kapoor and Ruslaan Mumtaz are likely to make guest appearances in the film.
 

MUMBAI: Vidhu Vinod Chopra has roped in Academy Award winner Barrie Osborne as the executive producer for his ambitious Hollywood project, Broken Horses.
The 66-year-old executive producer had been living in New Zealand for the last 10 years through the duration of ‘‘The Lord Of The Rings‘‘ trilogy.

He has only recently moved back to Los Angeles for Chopra’s film and has jointly set up a production office that earlier housed the Warner Hollywood Studios.

Osborne has worked on Hollywood films like The Matrix, Apocalypse Now, Face/Off, and won the Best Picture Academy Award for The Lord of the Rings The Return Of The King.

Broken Horses will have a western cast and crew and will start shooting from 13 September. Besides Osborne, Hollywood veteran Fred Roos has also been brought on board as executive producer to put the project and cast together.

MUMBAI: PVR Pictures, the film production and distribution arm of PVR Group, is set to release Eclipse, the third installment from the Twilight series, on 30 July.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, which stars Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, has topped the worldwide box office with $261 million in its kitty (as on 4 July end). The film was released in over 4416 locations in the USA.

Said PVR Pictures worldwide distribution head Deepak Sharma, “We have released the first two editions of the franchise that is, Twilight and New Moon in India. Eclipse is by far the most awaited Hollywood film in India this summer; we would be releasing Eclipse in more than 700 screens (English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu language) all over the country.”

In The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, Bella once again finds herself surrounded by danger as Seattle is ravaged by a string of mysterious killings and a malicious vampire continues her quest for revenge. In the midst of it all, she is forced to choose between her love for Edward and her friendship with Jacob – knowing that her decision has the potential to ignite the struggle between vampire and werewolf. With her graduation quickly approaching, Bella is confronted with the most important decision of her life.
 

MUMBAI: A shipment of over 1700 pirated copies of Raavan was recently intercepted by the New Zealand Customs, thus preventing an Auckland-based Indian video hire business from hijacking the release of the film.

A lawyer from law firm James and Wells, acting on behalf of protecting the intellectual property of film distributor Claire Tompkins, said that her client received an anonymous tip-off about the shipment arriving on the film‘s opening weekend. She immediately filed a Copyright Customs Notice that allowed customs frontline officers to be on the lookout and detain any pirated copies coming into the country. This resulted in the shipment being found and seized.

The unnamed importer has chosen to forfeit the goods rather than face consequences by the official distributor.

Raavan, which had its worldwide premiere on 18 June, grossed $60,000 on its opening weekend in New Zealand, the third highest for a Bollywood film.
 

MUMBAI: Rohit Jugraj who had earlier directed films like Superstar and James is all set to make a bio-pic on math whiz Srinivasa Ramanujan.

Titled The Man Who Knew Infinity, the film will be based on Robert Kanigel’s ‘The Man Who Knew Infinity; A Life of the Genius Ramanujan’. The movie will strar Suriya in the title role. 

The genius Ramanujan has been fascinating Jugraj for sometime now and since the last two years, the director has been working on the project.

But there seems to be a hurdle which Jugraj is confident of crossing. Jugraj is on the verge of buying the rights of the biography from the publishers, Picador. But there is some delay from the publisher’s end.

Jugraj says that if the book doesn’t come to him, he will proceed to piece together Ramanujan’s life story based on the math maestro’s family revelations.

Ramanujan’s family is happy to hear that their ancestor will soon be seen on celluloid.
 

MUMBAI: The producers of the Suniel Shetty-starrer Red Alert – The War Within, T.P. Aggarwal and his son Rahul Aggarwal, have dubbed the film in three languages – Telugu, Chattisgarhi and English.

Red Alert: the War Within is based on the true story of Narasimha (Suniel Shetty), a poor farm labourer who desperately needs money to fund the education of his children. To earn his way, he finds himself in the midst of the Naxalite movement and is forced to make difficult, and morally questionable, choices.

For a change, no dubbing artistes have been used. Every actor in the film, right from Suniel Shetty, Vinod Khanna and Naseeruddin Shah, have dubbed their lines themselves.

While all the four versions will have a simultaneous release the coming Friday, the English version will be released at select screens internationally in the first round

MUMBAI: Karan Malhotra will direct Karan Johar‘s new-age Agneepath, the film in which Amitabh Bachchan‘s brilliant performance as Vijay Dinanath Chavan won him a National award.

The upcoming film, an adaptation and restructured version of the film that Karan‘s father Yash Johar had produced, has been penned by Karan Malhotra along with two other writers. 

While Agneepath was deeply influenced by Scarface, the new Agneepath purports to pay homage to Scarface.

Karan Malhotra was the associate director in My Name Is Khan.

It is widely reported that Hrithik Roshan has been approached to essay the character that Amitabh Bachchan essayed.

MUMBAI: Youth-centric films have been getting good openings down the ages. Be it Rishi Kapoor-Dimple Kapadia’s Bobby or Kumar Gaurav-Vijeta Pandit starrer Love Story or Sanjay Dutt-Tina Munim’s Rocky, all got to a very good start.

Dharma Productions’ Imran Khan-Sonam Kapoor-starrer I Hate Luv Storys proved no exception. The film opened with a collection of Rs 65 million on Friday and then went on to amass Rs 220 million in the opening weekend. City multiplexes opened to 80 to 90 per cent response while at some places the occupancy even was 100 per cent. 

Comments Fun Cinemas COO, Vishal Kapur, “The film has been doing good. While on Friday the occupancy was between 50 to 60 per cent, on Sunday it increased to almost 80 per cent. The film is expected to do well in the week days also as most of the college-going boys and girls have taken to the film.”

At several plexes, the film fetched one of the biggest openings of the year. Looking at the tremendous response from the youth, several plexes, in fact, decided to add more shows on Friday itself.

Made at a modest budget of Rs 250 million, the film has been released in over 1000 screens across India while 250-odd prints have been distributed in the international markets, including the US and Dubai.

Next week too cinema halls are expected to be flooded with fans of Shahid Kapur and Kareena Kapoor as their film Milenge Milenge releases.

MUMBAI: A week after launching its new toll-free number, Alliance Against Copyright Theft (AACT) continued its efforts to curb and eradicate piracy.

Along with various enforcement agencies and local police, AACT conducted raids across Mumbai and Gujarat that led to the seizure of close to 42,000 pirated discs estimated to cost over Rs 4.2 million.

A joint team from AA Khan and Associates and PI Waagh from Rabodi Police station raided a warehouse at Thane Rabodi area, near Hakkani Masjid.

During the operation close to 23,500 discs were seized with more than 2,000 DVDs of the Imran Khan Sonam Kapoor starrer I hate Luv Storys along with those of Rajneeti, Raavan, Housefull, Krantiveer.

In other joint raids conducted across Mumbai by enforcement agencies and local police, 5,500 pirated discs were seized near Andheri Station (west). Three raids were conducted near Bandra Talao including a raid on a small warehouse near a Pan Bakda stall where a total of 2,270 pirated DVDs of films like Toy Story 3, Rajneeti and Kites were seized.

Similarly a raid in Pali Naka in Khar unearthed about 1350 pirated DVDs of films like Toy Story 3, Harry Potter 7 along with Ravaan and Rajneeti.

In Gujarat, a joint operation by Ahmedabad Crime Branch conducted at Godasar raided a private premise where newly released DVDs were being duplicated. The police arrested one person and seized 12 DVD writers, 300 blanks, 700 DVD’s including prints of films like Raavan, Rajneeti and Kites among others.

MUMBAI: 27-year-old Imran Khan will romance 30-year-old Kareena Kapoor in Karan Johar’s yet untitled film to be directed by Shakun Batra.

Batra, who recently joined Dharma Productions, was an assistant director in Rock On!! and Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. 

It is said that both Imran and Kareena had shown interest in working with each other. Hence when Johar spoke to Kareena about it, she immediately agreed; and so did Imran.

Batra has reportedly written the script of the film with Aayesha. The film will go on the floors this December.