Category: Movies

MUMBAI: Rakesh Roshan‘s film Krazzy4 will be released on Friday 11 April with its title track deleted.

Music composer Ram Sampath, who sought legal recourse for his 60-second music titled ‘The Thump‘ being copied as the title track of Krazzy 4, has also been granted interim relief of Rs 25,00,000 by the Mumbai High court on Thursday. Sampath had dragged Hrithik Roshan’s director father Rakesh Roshan and composer uncle Rajesh Roshan, to court, alleging that they have “directly lifted” his music for the Krazzy4 album, seeking damages of Rs 20 million.

The court instructed the Roshans to delete two songs if they want to release the film on Friday. While delivering the verdict, Justice Karnik of the Mumbai high court said, “To my untrained ear, the music appeared to be similar,” after listening to both Sampath‘s work for a Sony Ericsson cellphone advertisement, and the two songs composed by Rajesh Roshan for the film.

The verdict implies that the much hyped Hrithik Roshan number and Shah Rukh Khan‘s Break Free item numbers in the film will have to be removed, reports say. This is easier said than done as the film prints have already been dispatched for the overseas release, as well as territories outside Mumbai.

Sampath’s lawyer Virendra Tulzapurkar told the court that mere monetary compensation would not suffice, adding that “The SMS-s sent by Hrithik establish that they knew the music was not created by them. They have done this knowingly and deliberately,” reports say.

The lawyer also presented the opinion of Shiv Mathur, an independent expert, who confirmed Sampath’s allegation of plagiarism. Tulzapurkar added that the defendants were earning Rs 70 million per month simply from ringtone downloads and Rs 25 million per month from the sales of the music.

Sampath, 32, who has composed music for over 3,000 advertisements, music tracks of films like Khakee and Let’s Talk, and even done a remix for pop sensation Justin Timberlake, had filed a suit for copyright infringement in Bombay High Court. He alleged that four tracks from Krazzy4 were “direct lifts” from the music he had composed for an advertisement titled ‘Thump’ for Sony Ericsson phones in March 2007.

While Sampath remained unavailable for comment, his singer wife Sona Sampath said, “as the matter is subjudice, anything we say will affect us adversely. One individual against so many institutions is tough and we don‘t want to jeopardise the case , but believe the truth shall prevail.”

MUMBAI: Creative Eye has signed a deal with a Hyderabad-based animation company for co-producing animation films.

Their first film, which is being built around a budget of Rs 30 million and a timeline of 11 months, is based on the Hindu goddess Durga and her nine manifestations.

“We‘ve entered into a JV with a Hyderabad-based animation company for producing animation films. The creative input will be ours whereas the administration bit will be looked upon by them. We have already started work on our first film and our creative team is working on the execution,” states Creative Eye chairman and MD Dheeraj Kumar. He, however, refused to reveal the animation company’s name.

The film will first release theatrically in India and then digitally. Depending on the success of the film, it will be dubbed into various other languages.

MUMBAI: UTV has announced that it is launching titles from its World Movies catalogue on home video in May.

UTV Motion Pictures says that it has got a varied catalogue of titles whose telecast rights have been acquired directly from the sole distributors of the films. The company says that its home distribution network in the metros, mini metros and class-1 towns in India reaches close to one million towns across the country.

The UTV Home Video division distributes its own movies – big Bollywood blockbusters, as well as Hollywood content.

UTV Entertainment Television CEO Shantonu Aditya says, “As a strong company philosophy, we have always believed in retaining our intellectual property rights as this makes us valued content custodians. We are very positive on the tremendous scope and growth prospects of this business and we know that this business model would drive our revenues significantly. We are going to provide value for money to Indian viewers as they get to see original versions of some of the most entertaining and recent box-office hits from around the world.”

World Movies has a library of over 500 titles including blockbuster hits and award winners across film festivals from around the world including the Oscars. Almost 50 per cent of these titles are available on DVD. Some of these titles include the Spanish film Buenos Aires 1977 that was nominated for the Golden Palm at Cannes in 2006; the new Carlos Saura musical Fados, La Zona – award winner at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival; and Pierre Salvadori‘s comedy Priceless, a movie that ably demonstrates that if money cannot buy love, it sure can purchase lots of obsequious service from four-star hotel staffers and costly goodies from laughably pricey boutiques!

UTV adds that with several players in the market fighting for larger mind share of audiences, home video is at a significant stage in India with a lot of scope for penetration. Products are being offered at much lower costs to beat competition and exploitation is rampant after each theatrical release. The hardware costs of the DVDs are also getting lower.

MUMBAI: Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, together with the Embassy of India, will be screening Satyajit Ray‘s Pather Panchali at the Indian film festival that began on 7 April 2008 in Abu Dhabi.

The film will be screened on 10 April at the Al Dhafra Theatre.

Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage has joined hands with the Indian embassy to organise the fourth festival of award winning Indian films in Abu Dhabi.

The other films to be screened during the festival are Aparna Sen‘s Mr and Mrs Iyer, Shyamaprasad‘s Ore Kadal and Ray‘s Charulatha.

The festival will end with the screening of Shonali Bose‘s Amu on 11 April.

MUMBAI: Pyramid Saimira, which entered the Bollywood arena with the distribution of Halla Bol, has signed Anees Bazmee for their first Hindi film production.

Bazmee, who directed Welcome in 2007 and is now busy with Vipul Shah’s Singh is King, will be working out the details with the South Indian production house.

On being contacted, Pyramid Saimira MD PS Saminathan confirmed the news. “These will be big-budget films and we are currently finalising the details.”

Apparently, they are working around a budget of Rs 2 billion for all three films.

Adds Bazmee, “I will be doing three films for Saimira. We still have to decide on the scripts.” About the whooping budget of the film, he says that it will not be shocking by the time these films are launched.

The films are slated to be out in 2010 and 2011.

MUMBAI: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc (MGM) Pictures, together with Relativity Media, LLC (RMLLC), has secured the rights to Robert Ludlum‘s novel The Matarese Circle.

RMLLC is a financing, consulting and production company that utilises both traditional and non-traditional channels in order to raise production and distribution funds, both for major studios and independent production entities.

Additionally, MGM and RMLCC have also closed a deal with two-time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington to star in the film, which is an adaptation of the suspense thriller and bears the same name.

Writers of 3:10 to Yuma, Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, have been roped in to write the film‘s script.

Jeffrey Weiner, Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Nick Wechsler, producers of The Bourne Ultimatum, Transformers and North Country, respectively, will serve as producers for the film.

Tucker Tooley will oversee the creative for Relativity.

Ludlum‘s The Matarese Circle is set during the Cold War period. The book pairs two rival spies, one from the CIA and the other from the KGB. The rival spies bury their hatchet for the moment because it is only they who are smart enough to have the killing abilities to go up against an international circle of killers called the Matarese.

MUMBAI: Sharang Sharma, who quit Sahara One Motion Pictures in February, has joined Sa Re Ga Ma as the distribution head, acquisitions and business development.

Confirming the news, Saregama India MD Subroto Chattopadhyay said, “Yes, Sharang has come on board as the distribution head and will be taking care of all our films.”

Sharang was earlier in talks with 20th Century Fox, which is slated to hit India soon.

“I had been weighing my options since I left Sahara. And now I am really looking forward to my journey with this company,” added Sharma.

MUMBAI: The media division of Goldstone Technologies Ltd has signed an agreement with Navketan International Films to do the colour grading and restoring of Guide, a Hindi film classic starring Dev Anand and Waheeda Rehman.

Navketan International Films is a movie production company owned by Bollywood actor Dev Anand.

The film directed by Vijay Anand is based on R K Narayan‘s classic book Guide and was released to critical acclaim and commercial success in 1965.

Also, Goldstone has already delivered the colorized version of Satya Harishchandra to the KCN Enterprises, owner of world‘s negative rights of the classic Kannada feature film. The film starring Dr Raj Kumar was released in 1965.

Goldstone Technologies media division business unit head C Jagan Mohan said, ” Our research team has come out with great detailing required for coloring the movie, frame by frame. Every character was clearly defined and projected the way the creator had visualized this movie.”

This is the first film which the media division of Goldstone has restored, colorized and delivered. Apart from restoration and colorization, the format of the movie has also been converted to cinemascope from existing 35mm using a special technology to make it suitable for modern theatres.

“We are really amazed at the picture quality of restored and colorized Satya Harishchandra. The colorized and re-scaled version of movie looks very dynamic in full cinema scope. The film, a classic to begin with, has now become contemporary because it has been colorized, re-scaled to cater to the taste to today‘s movie-going public,” said KCN Enterprises owner KCN Gowda.

MUMBAI: Eros International plans to have an unprecedented line-up of 35 releases in 2008, indicating that it wants to scale up to dominate the Indian movie market.

Eros says it will be highly focused on its blockbuster releases this year which include the Eros International-Rose Movies co-production Drona, to be released over the Indian Independence Day weekend. Directed by Goldie Behl, the film stars Abhishek Bachchan, Priyanka Chopra, Jaya Bachchan and KK Menon.

Eros will this year release Sujoy Ghosh‘s Aladin, the evergreen Arabian nights story in a new Bollywood format with a high level of visual effects.

Eros will also release Toonpur ka Super Hero, an animation film with live characters. Starring the husband-wife duo Ajay Devgan and Kajol, Toonpur is a story in which a reel life hero accidentally lands in the world of cartoons and transforms into a real life hero.

Other films slated for release this year include You, Me Aur Hum marking the directorial debut of leading actor Ajay Devgan; the Diwali weekend bonanza Yuvraj, a musical film directed by Subhash Ghai starring Anil Kapoor, Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif, and Eros International-Sajid Nadiadwala co-production Kambakht Ishq directed by Saabir Khan with Akshay Kumar and Kareena Kapoor in the lead roles.

In addition, romantic comedy God Tussi Great Ho starring Salman Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Amitabh Bachchan and Sohail Khan is slated for release this year. Also scheduled to release is the Ganesh Acharya directed comedy Money Hai Toh Honey Hai with Govinda, Aftab Shivdasani, Celina Jaitley and Hansika Motwani in the lead roles.

Eros will release Ravi Chopra‘s Bhootnath, the Amitabh Bachchan, Juhi Chawla starrer with a special appearance by Shah Rukh Khan internationally this year.

Other films in the pipeline for global release in 2008 include Ram Gopal Varma‘s Sarkar Raaj and Rakesh Roshan‘s comedy Krazzy 4. Directed by Jaideep Sen, the film stars Juhi Chawla, with leading character actors Irfan Khan, Arshad Warsi, Rajpal Yadav and Suresh Menon as the gang of crazy four.

Other releases during the year include Mehbooba (a romantic comedy by Afzal Khan and starring Sanjay Dutt, Ajay Devgan and Manisha Koirala), Haal-e-dil (a young love story directed by Anil Devgan and starring newcomers – Producer Kumar Mangat‘s daughter Amita Pathak and actor Shekhar Suman‘s son Adhyayan Suman), Had Bahedi (with Rishi Kapoor), The Great Indian Butterfly (Sarthak Dasgupta), Pankh (an unusual story starring Bipasha Basu and Mahesh Manjrekar), Hijack (by Kunal Shivdasani starring Shiney Ahuja and Esha Deol) and Mr. White Mr. Black (a comic suspense thriller starring Suniel Shetty and Arshad Warsi).

Eros International has recently released Bombay to Bangkok, Sunday and Black and White directed by Subhash Ghai this year.

In the regional cinema space, Tamil media and entertainment company Ayngaran International, an Eros International company, has at least 15 films lined up for release this year. Films by directors like Prabhu Deva, Raju Sundaram, Jhananthan, Vishnu Vardhan, Selva Raghavan and other few filmmakers will be part of the Eros-Ayngaran bouquet.

The Eros International-Ayngaran slate includes Aegan by Raju Sundaram starring south superstars Ajith and Nayanthara, a yet untitled project by Prabhu Deva as a director with Vijay and Nayantara in the leads, Peraanmai by Jhananathan having Jeyam Ravi as the lead star, Sarvam by Vishnu Vardhan and Arya along with Trisha in the lead roles, two untitled projects by Selva Raghavan and a host of other films.

The international line-up of Tamil films include Kuruvi by Dharani starring Vijay and Trisha, Jeeva and Aneez, Dhaam Dhoom with Jeyam Ravi and Kangana Ranaut in the lead, Varanam Ayiram by Gautam Menon and starring Surya with Sameera, Kanthaswamy with Vikram and Shriya, the Surya and Tamanna starrer Ayan.

MUMBAI: Paramount‘s digital entertainment division is launching VooZoo application in MTV‘s vMTV virtual world and Makena‘s There.com.

With VooZoo, vMTV and There.com members can send each other video emoticons called Voohoos, which are made up of video clips from Paramount Pictures‘ library.

The Voohoos last for a few seconds and capture famous one-liners from a gamut of movies including Footloose, Flashdance, Beverly Hills Cop and Mean Girls.

Members of both the worlds will be able to purchase the clips for $1 each and use them when chatting with other members.

Furthermore, instead of just quoting lines from pop-culture figures like Cher Horowitz Clueless or Ferris Bueller‘s Ferris Bueller‘s Day Off, members can actually express themselves with the actual movie clip, which plays in a small window above their head.

Over time, movie clips from Paramount Pictures‘ library will be made available to There.com members. All of the movie clips offered will comply with There.com‘s PG-13 environment. Consumers will also have the opportunity to purchase a DVD via a sell-through capability that will pop up once a video clip is selected.

In addition, MTV will offer clips reflecting the best pop-culture moments from its stable of shows.

The VooZoo application is currently in private beta in There.com and will be available in vMTV some time in the next quarter.

VooZoo in vMTV and There.com marks the third migration of the application onto multiple platforms since its debut on Facebook last month.