Category: Hindi

MUMBAI: People Pictures‘ 99, released last week to an overwhelming response. The film had the true word-of-mouth effect that resulted in doubling of ticket sales on 16 and 17 May that saw the box-office collection soar to Rs 49.6 million.

The mid-budget film was released across approximately 400 screens in India.

Says producer Aditya Shastri, “The film is doing well in Mumbai, Delhi, UP, East Punjab, Nizam, Mysore and West Bengal.”

According to co-producer Anupam Mittal, 99 was tracking well in every test screening. “We knew that the film would surely grow on a strong word-of-mouth. We had to overcome the inertia that audiences had with no new Hindi films releasing in cinemas,” he quips.

Mittal notes that the film played true to script and now with the connect and audience reactions being borne out by the box-office results, the performance of the film should keep building.

“We released a few prints in the smaller centres to see the outcome, but 99 being an urban, slick flick has yielded us a better response from multiplexes and bigger cities. We hope this run will continue with smaller cities in the near future. The film started off on a slow note on the first day, but it has picked up pace at the box-office and I think it will continue to do so. That is why we‘re increasing the marketing spends too,” states Mittal.

99 is a story inspired by real events of 1999 and 2000. Directed by Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK and produced by Anupam Mittal and Aditya Shastri, 99 promises to be an original concoction of crime, comedy and coolness.

MUMBAI: Fox Star Studios is stepping into the rapidly growing Tamil film industry, the second most popular genre after Bollywood.

The joint venture company between Twentieth Century Fox and Asian broadcaster Star has signed AR Murugadoss, director of Ghajini, for development and production of two films.

“Tamil films constitute India‘s most popular genre after Bollywood. We are delighted to be accessing this growing segment by associating with one of the most successful writer-directors in Tamil and Hindi cinema. Murugadoss has an impeccable track record, and has demonstrated great understanding of the Tamil and Hindi audiences,” says Fox Star Studios CEO Vijay Singh.

The Tamil Film Industry is growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 15 per cent, luring the News Corp. company to be part of that growth wave.

Says Fox International Productions president Sanford Panitch, “We‘ve been looking at the Tamil market for quite some time and from the moment we met Murugadoss, we knew we have found a like-minded partner to lead us there.”

Murugadoss will be the creative producer and will select the scripts and the star cast for the two projects.

Says Murugadoss, “I am excited to work with Fox Star Studios India. It gives me a chance to use my deep association with the Tamil film industry to tell exciting new stories with our established stars and also to promote new talent. This partnership will also bring to Tamil cinema learning from the best technical and creative people from around the world.”

Earlier, Fox Star Studios had entered into a similar deal with Vipul Shah’s production house Blockbuster Films for a romantic comedy and a fantasy action thriller film.

The company also released the Oscar winning Danny Boyle film Slumdog Millionaire a few months back.

MUMBAI: The 1989 Aamir Khan starrer Raakh is being readied for re-release by Audacity International, a joint venture designed to distribute and support the release of independent cinema in India, on 12 June with 200 prints across India.

The company has been founded by director Aditya Bhattacharya and Asif Noor, the producer of the film and 12 other investors.

Raakh marked the unveiling of Aamir Khan who today is unarguably one of the biggest super stars of our times. While the film may have not been his first release, it truly marked the actor‘s debut as an actor.

The film was also the first time for industry bigwigs like Santosh Sivan, cinematographer extraordinaire Sreekar Prasad, musician Ranjit Barot and director Sangeeth Sivan (as an executive producer) to come together for a project.

The film also starred the husband-wife team of Pankaj Kapur and Supriya Pathak in key roles. Kapur won the National Award for best supporting actor later that year for the film.

The film also brought the National Award for best editing for Sreekar Prasad and best directorial début award for Aditya Bhattacharya from the prestigious Bengal Film Journalist‘s Association.

The film is now being revived and envisaged by the founders of Palador Pictures, which is behind the release strategy and restoration of the film.

“I am really happy I found Gautam Sikhnis who convinced me that now is the time to re-release the film across the country and I trust their vision,” says Asif Noor now based in Dubai.

MUMBAI: A number of Hollywood biggies have been associated for Tamil superstar Rajnikanth‘s upcoming film Endhiran.
Budgeted at $24 million, the Tamil film that is being shot in Chennai is said to be one of the most expensive films ever shot in the Asian subcontinent.

Its credits include some of Hollywood‘s major names. The Stan Winston special effects house, for instance, is creating a robot that will be a replica of the Indian film star.

Other big names of Hollywood to join the project are costume designer Mary E. Vogt who created the costumes in Batman Returns.

Stunt designer of Men In Black, Woo-Ping Yuen, whose credits include Kill Bill and The Matrix, and an unnamed Hollywood make-up artiste have been added to the team.

The movie that is currently in its fourth month of production is being backed by Sun TV network.

MUMBAI: Filmlab technical director Ujwal N.Nirgudkar will be making a presentation ‘Bollywood-The Story of Indian Cinema’ at the annual International conference of Association of Cinema & Video Laboratories (ACVL) of USA on 5 June in California.

Incidentally, Nirgudkar is the first Indian to be selected on the board of ACVL, an organization which started operating in 1953.

This 45-minute presentation that has been invited by ACVL because of the recent success of Slumdog Millionaire, will be about technical and historical developments in the Indian Film Industry.

The presentation will cover events from Late Dadasaheb Phalke‘s contribution to Indian Cinema to the current events and will cover industry efforts in Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bangalore and other parts of India. It will also have some statistics about the Indian film history.

MUMBAI: Percept Picture Company (PPC) will be investing Rs 1.5 billion in a nine-movie line up slated for later release, chief executive officer Navin Shah tells Indiantelevision.com.

PPC has entered into enduring tie-ups with eminent directors such as Madhur Bhandarkar, Nagesh Kukunoor, David Dhawan, Priyadarshan and Aneez Bazmee. The future movies will be created from this talent pool.

Apart from these future projects, PPC has also lined up a slate of films for 2009-10. The first to come out of the Percept stable will be 24×7 Raftaar, a movie directed by Shamim Desai, followed by Madhur Bhandarkar’s Jail.

Then there are films like Bumm Bumm Bole directed by Priyadarshan, Aashayein and Yeh Hausla directed by Nagesh Kukunoor, and Carry on Pandu directed by Chandrakant Kulkarni.

Percept started the year with Firaaq, Kanchivaram and 8×10 Tasveer. Says Shah, “PPC is ready with the next set of releases, the first being 24x7Raftaar which is scheduled for August 2009 release followed by Madhur Bhandarkar’s Jail. We eagerly await the strike to get over as we are ready with most of our films.”

Percept Picture Company is a part of Percept Holdings, a strategic holding company that promotes, owns and manages a spectrum of marketing communication companies. Percept Holdings has a capitalised billing of Rs 16.5 billion and employs over 1,000 employees in 64 offices across 22 locations.

MUMBAI

: Blockbuster Inc. has been told to pay $300,000 to resolve a lawsuit alleging that the video rental chain overcharged some of its customers in California for candy, popcorn, movies and other merchandise. Dallas-based Blockbuster has more than 500 stores in California.

The stipulated judgment that was pronounced on Monday ends a nearly five-year investigation into the way Blockbuster rang up sales in 14 California counties.

The judgment against Blockbuster consists primarily of $237,750 in penalities that will help fund consumer protection programmes in San Diego and Los Angeles counties.

The remaining $62,250 in investigation costs will be divided among 14 counties like San Diego, Los Angeles, Kern, Napa, Sacramento, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara and Stanislaus, Ventura, Riverside, Alameda, Santa Clara, San Mateo and Orange.

The probe found more than 3,800 discrepancies between the final sales price and the prices that had been advertised or posted in the 82 stores where the problems surfaced, said Gina Darvas, a deputy district attorney for San Diego County.

None of the alleged overcharging, however, involved video rentals, Darvas claimed. But inaccurate prices were found on various concessions and movies for sale which led to registering of unfair business practice lawsuit.

“This does not reflect the way we conduct business at our stores,” Blockbuster said in a statement. “We have assured the state that we will continue to take the necessary steps to ensure pricing for the products in our stores is accurate.”

MUMBAI: Adlabs Films USA is opening a new theatre in Niles, IL under their brand ‘Big Cinemas‘. The new 5-screen complex has an auditorium capacity of 1,300 seats per showing in 26,549 sq. feet of space. The movie theatre in Chicago will start free previews from 22 May and the opening happens on 29 May, the company said.

The theatre is Dolby Digital Surround and High Gain wall-to-wall screens. It introduces the ‘Ebony Lounge‘ a full service restaurant and bar featuring night menu till 2 am. Additional services and features for customers include online advance ticketing, ticketing kiosks and customer reward programmes.

The programme calendar would include latest Bollywood films, along with Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi and Punjabi films as well as World Cinema from different ethnicities such as Korean, Chinese and Polish. It will also be showing live telecasts of cricket matches and other events.

MUMBAI: Producers and plex owners failed to thrash out a solution once again, fighting over revenue shares and the way movies need to be distributed across theatre chains.

At a crucial meeting held today afternoon at a five-star hotel in Mumbai,
the United Producers and Distributors Forum (UPDF) and the multiplex owners renewed their spat.

The bone of contention was the distribution strategy of release. While the producers felt they had the right to select the theatres where they wanted their films to release, the plex owners demanded that the supply of prints should be across all the multiplexes.

“On this point there was no consensus and unfortunately the talks failed again,” a film producer says on request of anonymity.

On their part, the multiplex owners offered their revenue share terms. For the first week of release, they were willing to part with 50 per cent, in line with the UPDF demand. But for week 2, the share of 42.5 per cent is something that the producers did not agree with as it was three per cent below their asking share. Similarly, multiplexes were willing to part with 32.5 per cent and 27.5 per cent in weeks 3 and 4, but producers are agreeable to 40 per cent and 30 per cent respectively.

Sources say the meeting was attended by producers like Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Ramesh Sippy, Ravi Chopra, Sunil Lulla, Manmohan Shetty, Ramesh Taurani, Vipul Shah, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, Harry Baweja and Sajjid Nadiadwala.
Following the stalemate, producers are preparing to release their films at single-screen theatres and stand-alone multiplexes from 29 May.

This week two films – Detective Naani in Hindi and Nishani Dava Angtha in Marathi – are being released in multiplexes and single-screens in Maharashtra.

Multiplexes have taken a Rs 1.42 billion hit since producers have choked supply of their new Hindi movies from 4 April, according to Indiantelevision.com estimates.

MUMBAI: Film star Akshay Kumar was arrested under Section 294 and 34 of the Indian Penal code for obscene behaviour today morning at the Vakola police station. Since it was a bailable offence, the actor was released immediately. The actor who was on a foreign shoot for a month, surrendered before the police today.

It may me noted that at the recent Lakme India Fashion Week in March last, his wife Twinkle Khanna had unbuttoned his jeans in public when he walked the ramp for Tarun Tahiliani. The act was a part of Kumar trying to promote Levis unbutton jeans for which he is the brand ambassador.

Earlier Twinkle Khanna was also arrested for the same offence and let off on bail.