Category: Movies

MUMBAI: Eros International has acquired the worldwide rights of Samir Karnik’s Heroes and is set to release the film on 24 October.

Produced by Bharat Shah, the film stars Salman Khan, Priety Zinta, Sunny Deol, Bobby Deol, Mithun Chakraborty, Dino Morea, Sohail Khan, Vatsal Seth, Amrita Arora and Ria Sen.

Heroes revolves around the journey of two boys who travel a thousand miles “to meet their destiny and discover national pride”. The film has been shot across different locations in India including Delhi, Rajasthan, Himachal, Ladakh, Punjab and eastern India.

MUMBAI: Adlabs Films, the entertainment arm of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, is stepping up to tap the international film processing markets, specifically the US, UK and Europe.

Already one of the biggest end-to-end digital post-production services provider in India, Adlabs feels there is potential to have a strong outsourcing model for Hollywood studios due to a low-cost advantage.

As a first step towards achieving this ambition, Adlabs has got “International Anti-Piracy Certification” by the UK body – FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft). With the accreditation in place, Adlabs is hopeful of getting the foreign projects outsourced to its Film City premises in Mumbai.

“In the US, UK and other European countries, studios do not outsource processing because of piracy. Now after getting a certificate from an international body like FACT, studios and film-makers will know that they are dealing with a secure facility and we will be able to market ourselves better,” Adlabs motion picture processing and allied services president Shankar Dutta tells Indiantelevision.com.

The Adlabs facility in Mumbai has digital intermediate (DI), theatrical and video promo packaging, film scanning and film recording, visual effects and graphics, visual effects supervision, title design, HD and SD Telecine, HD and SD broadcast video tape mastering, DCI (digital cinema initiatives) compliant digital cinema encoding and mastering.

Also, there is a cost difference of at least 20-30 per cent between the US and Indian film processing market. “In India, the cost of film processing is substantially cheaper than it is in US. We will approach the studios in US and other countries to expand our operations,” Dutta adds.

Adlabs boasts of a state-of-art infrastructure and high production capacity. Dutta further adds, “We are working on 150 odd films. Our DI alone has a capacity of 100 films at a time. For us capacity is not a constraint and we are hoping to get all kind of projects.”

Although a large number of film service companies in the UK and Europe are accredited by FACT, this is the first time in FACT‘s 25-year history that it has accredited a company outside the UK or Europe.

Apart from Mumbai, Adlabs also has digital labs in Chennai and Kolkata.

MUMBAI: US media conglomerate Viacom has announced that Paramount Vantage will handle the international sales on Oscar winner Neil Jordan‘s latest film, Ondine.

Currently under production in Ireland, the film stars Colin Farrell (Miami Vice), Alicja Bachleda (Trade), and Stephen Rea (The Crying Game). The director of photography is Christopher Doyle. Vantage will handle the worldwide sales of the film excluding US, which will be represented by Creative Artists Agency (CAA).

The film tells the story of Syracuse, a local fisherman whose everyday life is transformed by a beautiful and mysterious woman whom he fishes from the sea.

Jordan says, “We feel we‘ve found the perfect home for the film with Paramount Vantage and I‘m pleased to be working with Colin Farrell again who brings tremendous depth to his characters. Ondine is an insanely romantic love story that exists within the realms of a fantasy world and pushes through the boundaries of the real world.”

MUMBAI: The Open Frame International Film festival, which begins from 12 September, is set to screen, “Divided Colours Of A Nation”, a documentary film directed by Umesh Aggarwal.

The festival that ends on 20 September will be held at Habitat Centre in New Delhi.

Produced by PSBT (Public Service Broadcasting), Divided Colours Of A Nation is a 60-minute film in English that focuses on caste-based reservation. It also aims to look into the status of education in the country.

Aggarwal’s last film, The Whistle Blowers, was awarded the National Award last year. It was a film on pesticides on packaged water and soft drinks. He is also producing a film called Underground Inferno for National Geographic Channel that will be released in November in 130 countries in 25 languages.

MUMBAI: Moserbaer Entertainment is set to release Righteous Kill, a psychological thriller starring Hollywood actors Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, across theatres in India on 12 September.

Righteous Kill, directed by Jon Avnet, has been penned by Russell Gewirtz of Inside Man fame and the cast of the film also features hip-hop star Curtis ‘50 Cent‘ Jackson (Get Rich or Die Tryin‘), Carla Gugino (American Gangster), John Leguizamo (Love In The Time Of Cholera) and Donnie Wahlberg (Saw II, III, IV).

Says Moserbaer Entertainment chief executive officer Harish Dayani, “The film is a thriller that transcends boundaries; and the Academy Award winners have come out with superlative performances. Hence, we are going all out to make Righteous Kill release in India a no-expenses spared effort.”

The movie is produced by Avi Lerner and Boaz Davidson of Millennium Films along with Randall Emmett, Daniel M. Rosenberg, Alexandra Milcham, Rob Cowan and Lati Grobman. Danny Dimbort, Trevor Short and George Furla are executive producers while Marsha Oglesby is the co-producer. Also, Brian Frankish is the line producer of the film.

MUMBAI: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures (MGM) has signed director Vadim Perelman of House of Sand and Fog fame to direct Poltergeist.

Executive vice president production, Cale Boyter, and vice president production, Luke Ryan, are overseeing the project for MGM.

Boyter says, “We are excited to have Vadim direct Poltergeist, a title which already has a built-in movie-going audience. We look forward to having him lead the creative direction on this new character-based horror project that will utilise the original film as a jumping off point.”

Vadim Perelman is currently directing Ice, a drama pilot for the AMC cable network. He is also the executive producer of the project.

NEW DELHI: Eminent film critic Aruna Vasudev, who recently stepped down as founder-director of the Osian’s-Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema, was felicitated for services to film criticism and the growth of Asian cinema.

In the event, organised by the Delhi Malayalee Film Society and the Habitat Film Club, the critic was paid laudable tributes by film society movement veteran N P Radhakrishnan and educator president Professor Omcherry N N Pillai.

Several award winners in the 54th National Film Awards were also felicitated on the occasion. They included Films Division chief producer Kuldip Sinha. Sinha announced that the Division had a collection of over 8,000 films in its digital archives, which could be used for research by anyone.

Though Vasudev is no longer director of the Festival, she continues as a consultant, and is also on the Board of Directors of the Osian‘s Connoisseurs of Art. She is currently a consulting editor with Wisdom Tree for its series of books on Indian cinema, of which six have already been published.

Vasudev founded the world’s first quarterly on Asian cinema, ‘Cinemaya’, in 1988 and was later one of the founders of the Network for Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC), of which she is the president.

MUMBAI: Eros International will release Drona in cinemas across UK and worldwide on 2 October.

Directed by Goldie Behl and produced by Eros International and Rose Movies, Drona features Abhishek Bachchan and Priyanka Chopra.

The movie will see many special effects shots that are executed by EyeQube Studios, headed by Charles Darby whose credits include Titanic, The Matrix, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Fifth Element and Minority Report.

Commenting on the release of Drona, Eros International India president Sunil Lulla said, “Eros International is immensely proud to release a film of Drona‘s calibre to a worldwide audience and one that has given Eros the opportunity to further push the filmic boundaries of Indian cinema and explore new territories with our unparalleled collective imagination.”

Inspired by Indian mythology and translated to the modern day, Drona is a tale of one man‘s journey through myths and legendary legacies. The lead protagonist, ‘Drona‘ (Abhishek Bachchan), takes a voyage that forces him to confront his fears and to become the hero he was destined to be.

“Drona is one of the biggest budget films to emerge from India and unequivocally the technical best. With this film, we have once again taken the decision to plunge into ever deeper creative depths and to treat our audiences to innovative and original film content,” added Lulla.

MUMBAI: The standoff between the Screen Actors Guild in the US and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) continues.

In a bid to convince its members to press for a more satisfactory agreement, the mebers of Sag‘s negotiating board had sent a 14-page newsletter to its members called ‘Your negotiating committee fights on to achieve a fair contract‘.

It had articles such as ‘The beginning of the end of residuals‘ and ‘Why can‘t Sag just give in?‘ and also includes a polling card calling on members to vote to continue negotiations or accept the final AMPTP offer. Sag members continue to work under the old contract that had expired in June 2008.

Meanwhile the AMPTP had rebutted saying that Sag‘s mass postcard mailing is designed to give Sag negotiators the answer they want to hear – and only the answer they want to hear. The two questions on the postcard “poll” are written in a completely one-sided way, characterising the 30 June final offer as unfair.

The AMPTP statement notes that the 12 pages of material accompanying the postcard are just as one-sided and are filled with misrepresentations. AMPTP refutes Sag‘s negotiators insistence that talks are ongoing. The facts are exactly the opposite says the AMPTP.

“No informal negotiations regarding SAG‘s TV/Theatrical contract have been going on, and for Sag‘s negotiators to suggest otherwise is to intentionally mislead the membership. AMPTP has made the new media template work for directors, writers and actors (in two separate Aftra agreements), and all have now gone back to work. It‘s long past time for Sag members to begin enjoying the higher wages, plan contributions, streaming and other new media residuals already being paid to other Guild members.”

Sag‘s national executive director Doug Allen maintains that the reason a new contract has not been signed is because the AMPTP has not put forth an accepatble offer.

MUMBAI: Reliance ADAG‘s BigFlix.com is planning to add 5000 movie titles to its Video-on-Demand (VoD) platform by the end of this fiscal.

Bollywood will comprise 65 per cent of the titles while regional films will take up the balance 35 per cent of the content.

BigFlix.com, which has just completed one year, has 1400 titles available on its VoD platform.

“We have already signed contracts with content owners for 900 titles, which will soon be added to our VoD platform. Also, within the next seven months we are looking at acquiring and adding 2800 more titles to the BigFlix platform,” BIGFlix.com COO Kamal Gianchandani tells Indiantelevision.com.

The VoD and DVD rental service provider will acquire films on a revenue share arrangement with the content right owners. Says Gianchandani, “Content owners will share 25-40 per cent of the revenues that we generate.”

While Bollywood will be the main focus, regional films will include Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi, Bengali and Gujarati, Gianchandani adds.

Meanwhile, with an aim to expand its movie rental business, Bigflix aims to launch 100 more rental stores across ten cities during the fiscal. The company currently has 17,000 titles available across its 100 movie rental stores.

“Presently, we are running 100 rental stores across ten cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh and Indore. We are looking at adding 100 stores in these cities by the end of this fiscal,” Gianchandani says.