ITV

Category: Movies

  • Broccoli family joins Sahara in bid for MGM

    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.

  • Geetha Arts, KWAN form marketing agency for Southern Cinema

    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.
     

  • Robot firms up distributors in high-profile launch

    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.
     

  • Crest, CRL tie up for India’s first 3D stereoscopic animation film

    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

  • Goa to portray as film shooting destination in next IFFI

    MUMBAI: Goa will promote itself as a destination for shooting films during the upcoming International Film Festival of India (IFFI).


    Addressing the delegates of South Asian Film Festival (SAFF), Entertainment Society of Goa (ESG)‘s chief executive officer Manoj Srivastava said, “The Entertainment Society of Goa (ESG) will have a stall during ensuing IFFI, which will showcase Goa as a destination for shooting films. We are trying to attract people. How do you attract people? We have to give them benefits and make it easier for them to shoot.”


    Srivastava said that initially when IFFI travelled to Goa, the state did not have a film culture. But with the passage of time, the participation of locals has increased. “Goa has enough to shoot. Except snow, the state has everything. Even if you want to create a desert scene, it can be done having the beach as the background.”


    ESG is a nodal agency created by the state government to promote film culture and film related activities in Goa.
     

  • The King’s Speech garners top Toronto fest award

    MUMBAI: The Tom Hooper directed The King‘s Speech won the top award at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday, giving a much needed boost for the film to vie for the Oscar awards.


    The film starring Colin Firth as Britain‘s reluctant King George VI and Geoffrey Rush as his speech therapist won the festival‘s People‘s Choice award.


    Other films that earlier won the award were American Beauty,Crash, and Slumdog Millionaire and later walked off with best picture awards at the Oscars.


    Firth‘s King George, the father of Queen Elizabeth II, is initially reluctant to ascend to the crown following the abdication of his brother Edward VIII. Plagued by a nervous stammer, he enlists the help of a speech therapist and is eventually able to lead the country into World War II.


    Runner-up for the prize was the Justin Chadwick-directed film The First Grader that tells the story of an illiterate man in his eighties who tries to enlist in a Kenyan primary school to take advantage of government-sponsored education.


    The 35th edition of the festival was notable for the long-awaited opening of the $200 million Bell Lightbox complex, the first permanent home for the festival.

  • Pirates hack website of MPAA on Saturday

    MUMBAI: Enraged by the escalation in anti-piracy efforts, pirates hacked the website of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the lobbying arm of the major Hollywood studios on Saturday.


    MPAA.org and the website of AiPlex Software, a company the MPAA hired to target sites where piracy was rampant, were out of action for long periods the day.


    Said an MPAA spokesman, “The MPAA is aware of the illegal attack and has taken measures to mitigate the effect of any denial-of-service attack.” In the later part of the day, the organisation was able to get its site back online.


    The attacks were declared on the message-board group 4chan that is notorious as a hotbed for piracy activity. Their call to arms was prompted by a statement AiPlex made earlier in the month about stepping up its own efforts to counter copyright-infringing content.
     

  • Umesh Kulkarni’s ‘Vijay’ wins top prize at Bangkok fest

    MUMBAI: Umesh Kulkari’s Short Film Vilay (Dissolution) won the top award in the International Competition section of the Thai Short Film and Video Festival held from 26 August to 5 September in Bangkok .


    The film centres on a grandson returning home and remembering with pain and sorrow, the open-door welcome he always got from his late grandmother in their old-word home, all of which had totally changed in the new-age city.


    Dissolution was one of 15 entries in the International section that had entries from countries like Israel, Finland, Malaysia, Brazil and Austria.


    Kulkarni won the top prize at this festival last year too for his film The Three of Us.


    It is also heard that Kulkarni’s debut feature film The Well will be screened at the World Film Festival of Bangkok in November. The festival will also screen Laxmikant Shetgaonkar‘s Man beyond the Bridge.


    Thailand’s Short Film & Video Festival is 14 years old, and is proof of the popularity of this film-genre in the Land of Smiles. In fact, the jam-packed hall of the vibrant Bangkok Arts & Culture Centre is a welcome sight.
     

  • Sahara bids $2 billion to buy MGM

    MUMBAI: Beleaguered Hollywood studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. has found a new suitor in Indian conglomerate Sahara India Pariwar.


    Sahara’s bid to rescue the debt-laden studio is $2 billion (Rs 94 billion). The talks are, however, at an exploratory stage.


    Another Indian conglomerate, Reliance Entertainment , had earlier bid for MGM but later walked out of it. 


    Meanwhile, MGM lenders have agreed to forgive debt payments for the seventh time in a year. This gives the studio time till 29 October to restructure its $4 billion debt.


    Spyglass Entertainment has signed a non-binding letter of intent to take over the management of the studio.


    MGM was up for sale in November and bids came from various companies, including a $1.5 billion offer from Time Warner. But the bid amounts failed to win the nod of MGM’s creditors.


    MGM‘s assets include the James Bond franchise and half of “The Hobbit” films, its name and logo, the United Artists operations, and a library with over 4,000 titles.
     

  • Pakistani task force coming to take lessons from Bollywood

    MUMBAI: A special task force formed by Pakistan to revive its film industry will be visiting Mumbai to learn lessons from Bollywood, a senior Pakistani senate committee chairman disclosed in Panaji.


    Speaking to reporters in Panaji, Nilofar Bakhtiar, chairman of a senate committee on culture and tourism, said that she would having several meetings for the 16-member task force with top Bollywood personalities. 


    Said Bakhtiar, leader of a delegation of Pakistani officials and filmmakers to the South Asian Film Festival (SAFF), which is underway in Goa, ‘We recently formed a task force to revive Pakistani cinema in which we have leading filmmakers as members. If they come to India, it would have good impact on our industry and future relations of both the countries. Indian cinema is extremely advanced and we want Indian filmmakers to work with us. We also want training opportunities for our actors and directors in India.”


    ‘It took us a long time and tremendous pressure to allow Indian cinema to be aired in Pakistan. We would like India to reciprocate,‘ she added.