Category: Movies

MUMBAI: Reliance Big Pictures and Madras Talkies‘ upcoming film Raavan will release simultaneously on 18 June in approximately 2200 screens worldwide.

The Hindi version Raavan will release in 1250 screens in India and in 325 screens overseas across 35 countries including US, Canada, UK, UAE, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, South Africa, Netherlands, France, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India.

The Tamil version Ravanan will release in 225 screens in the country including Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka and also in Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Pune, Nasik, Surat, Baroda and Kolkata with English subtitles. 

Besides, it will release in 150 screens overseas in Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, US, UK, Middle East Asia, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

The Telugu dubbed version Villian will release in 215 screens in Andhra Pradesh and in addition in 25 screens in US, Australia and New Zealand.

Says Reliance Big Pictures CEO Sanjeev Lamba, “Reliance Big Pictures is proud to partner with Madras Talkies and present Raavan in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu for audiences worldwide. We hope that the film‘s success is repeated and further strengthened with the highly-anticipated Hindi debut of Vikram.”
 

NEW DELHI: The experimental ‘Mr Singh Mrs Mehta’, written and directed by Pravesh Bhardwaj, is to be strategically released on 25 June at just around 20 screens and will later be taken to other parts of the country.

Based in London, the film stars Prashant Narayanan with British-Indian stars Aruna Shields, Lucy Hassan and Naved Aslam. It is produced by Tutu Sharma and Manu S Kumaran.

The film is a mature story of adultery, attempting to show how circumstances are often responsible for what married couples do. When Ashwin Mehta and Neera Singh find that their spouses are having an affair, they find comfort in their growing friendship even as they resolve not to be like their unfaithful mates.

Bhardwaj said he was inspired by agony aunt columns in newspapers to conceive this story. While the film had only four main characters, painting assumes an important role in the second half.

Bhardwaj, who had earlier made the ‘Shaheen’ serial for television, denied that the film had been made with non-resident Indians in mind and stressed that the choice of London was not for this reason.

He denied any problems with the Central Board of Film Certification which had cleared the film with an ‘Adults only’ certificate. However, he admitted that the process of censorship had taken a long time, primarily because of some steamy scenes between Narayanan and Shields.

Narayanan in an interview later denied any titillating scenes and said that kissing scenes were very normal in films today.

Stating that the film was shot in Wales, he said he was a director’s actor and it was the heroines who had made him feel comfortable on the sets.

Asked why he had acted in a very small number of films, he said an actor has to be meticulous. He had recently acted in an international production ‘Shadows of Time’ and had also acted in films like ‘White Elephant’, and ‘Waisa bhi hota hai’.

He also said he was a writer and was presently writing the scripts for some films including one related to badminton – for which he had attained national championship status – and had his own band of musicians. In fact, he often made suggestions to music directors in all his films.
 

NEW DELHI: ‘Krantiveer – A Revolution’, touted as a sequel to the Nana Patekar-Dimple Kapadia starrer ‘Krantiveer’, will be released all over the country at 450 to 500 screens on 25 June.

Starring Sameer Aftab, Jahan Bloch, Harsh Rajput, and Aditya Singh Rajput, with Farida Jalal, Govind Namdeo and Aman Verma, the film has been directed by Mehul Kumar.

Kumar told indiantelevision.com that the film was a sequel in the sense that the main protagonist is the daughter of the role enacted by Nana Patekar in the 1994 film.

The message of the film was very clear: “We achieved independence at midnight. But we are still awaiting the morning of freedom from corruption and terror.”

There was, therefore, a need for a new revolution, to rouse the people to speak out as the protagonists of his film do.

Asked if he had any problems with a new star cast, he said it was in fact easy to direct these youngsters as they had no tantrums and were eager to learn.
 

MUMBAI: Sony Pictures‘ The Karate Kid blew away competition and took the number one spot at the US box-office grossing $56 million.

In India too, the film edged out two other high-profile Hollywood films that released simultaneously last week, roping in Rs 45 million in the opening weekend box-office. Besides releasing in English, the film also released in Hindi and Tamil. That makes Jackie Chan‘s number one opening film in India.

Comments Sony Pictures managing director Kercy Daruwala, “The film has universal appeal and has been greatly appreciated by action fans and family audiences. We continue to expect strong numbers in the coming week, thanks to the extremely positive word of mouth and the fact that many shows were housefull during the weekend.”

“Due to the ongoing summer vacation in most parts of India, the central character being a kid and the starring role by Jackie Chan, we judged that kids would be the core audience and would eventually bring their parents to the theatres. We targetted them aggressively through kids channels, on ground promotions such as “Kick as high as the Karate Kid”, Karate Kid branded stationery and partnering with martial arts tournaments,” said Director – Marketing Bhavesh Thakkar. “We also targetted Tamil Nadu very strongly since it has a huge and loyal Jackie Chan fan base. We believe this helped The Karate Kid to stand apart on its own and become a must-watch film for families.”

Sony Pictures will now release the Telugu version on 2 July.
 

MUMBAI: Network18’s AIM-listed The Indian Film Company (TIFC) is set for a recast.

Sandeep Bhargava, the chief executive officer, has quit even as the company is working out a revival plan. He will be serving his notice period till 30 June.

TIFC posted a net loss of ?4.56 million for the fiscal ended 31 March 2010 compared to a net profit of ?3.89 million a year ago. Revenue fell to ?19.88 million, as against ?40.90 million in FY‘09.

The group released nine films during the fiscal ended March 2010, all of which bombed at the box office. These included Shortkut – The Con is On, Luck, Life Partner, Fruit ‘N‘ Nut, London Dreams, Rann, Striker, Road, Movie and Hum Tum Aur Ghost.

Network18 and Viacom18 Group CEO Haresh Chawla will now take interim charge of the operations at TIFC.

“Over the last two years Sandeep has made TIFC a successful business venture and we wish him luck in his future endeavours,” Chawla said. “We will soon will start the next phase of our growth in the films business through TIFC and Studio18 and we shall share the details of that in time to come.”

Bhargava had joined the company in mid 2006 to launch Studio18. In the early period, TIFC and Studio18 had given blockbusters like Jab we Met, Welcome, Golmaal Returns, Singh Is Kinng and Ghajini. Two films from portfolio with debutant directors Sooni Taraporwala (Little Zizou) and Amrit Sagar (1971) got critical recognition and received National Awards.

In January this year, Studio 18 senior vice president marketing, distribution and syndication Priti Shahani had quit to join Reliance Big Pictures.

TIFC is a film investment company which was admitted to trading on the AIM market in June 2007 and raised ?55 million in order to invest in a diverse portfolio of Indian films targeted at the Indian audiences across varying genre, language and budgets.

During the year, Network18 made mandatory cash offer for the entire issued share capital of TIFC and increased its holding from 36.02 per cent to 80.38 per cent.

“After a lull, affected by the global crisis, there is a revival proposal that will be announced,” a source said.

MUMBAI: The under-production Shahid Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor starrer Mausam has got new producers in Eros International Media Ltd, Vistaar Religare and Cinergy.

With this film, Eros and Vistaar Religare plan to embark upon a long-term as they are looking at further projects together.

Avers Vistaar Religare Capital Advisors MD Sheetal V Talwar, “We invested in the film clearly knowing that Mausam will become the biggest hit of 2011.”

When asked about the future ventures with Eros, Talwar quips, “Today we have announced our first film; in a month we will come out with our future projects with Eros.”

Observes Eros International Media chief creative officer Ram Mirchandani, “We hope this is the beginning of a long association with Vistaar and Cinergy. We look forward to great days ahead of our association.”

Mausam that went on floor last month is being directed by Pankaj Kapur.

The film is about a pilot in the army who flies a Rs 3 billion plane but can never be sure that the expensive baby he rides won‘t let him down. He, therefore, extracts the maximum juice from every moment of life.

The movie is in its first schedule of filming in Edinburgh in Scotland. Several days of filming in Scotland was postponed due to disruption caused by the volcanic ash eruptions in Iceland.

The film will continue to shoot at other locales like Delhi, Punjab, Mumbai and Ahmedabad.

I have huge respect for Ram Mirchandani, Kishore and Sunil Lulla for their creative work.