Category — Entertainment Business

In March, acclaimed Director Steven Spielberg was in India for the first time since he shot a segment of Close Encounters of The Third Kind in the country. Spielberg’s Dreamworks studio already has a $300 million investment from Reliance Entertainment based in India’s movie capital, Mumbai.
While in Mumbai, Spielberg, who was accompanied by his wife Kate Capshaw, announced that Dreamworks and Reliance have decided to create a new movie to be shot in scenic Kashmir near the troubled India-Pakistan border.
In other news, Oscar winning El Segundo special effects company Rhythm & Hues, Inc. was bought by India’s Prana Studios. Earlier Mumbai-based Prime Focus acquired Frantic Films VFX.

When it is about popular sports played in India, the country there is almost only one game that matters in India, cricket. But when it comes to watching games on TV, other kind of sport becomes popular such as football, basketball, tennis, cycling or golf.

According to Chitra Johri, Vice President or Bradford license India, “the Indian youth finds it more edgy to get associated with these games through merchandise as it gives them an attitude value”.

Akash Jain, Sr. Director Business development & Partnerships, National Basketball Association India, says“going beyond the traditional offerings of jerseys, t-shirts and hats allow fans to display their support for our teams in their homes, at work or school, and in their everyday life with casual wear.

When promoting in India, the brands need to make sure to adapt to the region they are in, with a different strategy to engage the audience well. Here is what WWE does: they offer very high collectability and that works wonders for promotions. In India specifically, they are currently running a cross-category retail promotion with Landmark, and on the FMCG front they have recently partnered with Parle (clothing company) for a promotion involving WWE Slam Attax trading cards by Topps. Moreover, they also bring down WWE Superstars every year to India and that lends them a great opportunity for promoting WWE using talent that features weekly in programming.”

34×118 Holdings Inc., an affiliate of Prana Studios (an American computer animation and visual effects company, based in Los Angeles, with a subsidiary in Mumbai, India), recently won a bankruptcy auction. The company bid just $1.2 million in cash and assumption of up to $17 million in debt in order to acquire Rhythm & Hues Studios Inc. (a visual effect company with headquarters in El Segundo, CA), which recently won the visual-effects Oscar for “Life of Pi”. One of the failed bidders was another Indian player, Prime Focus of Mumbai, which already owns American assets.

Prana Studios was founded in 2003 and is backed by investors such as Anand Mahindra of Mahindra group, Mukesh Ambani of Reliance Industries, and Indian Americans Naren Gupta of Nexus Capital. Allan Soong of Deliotte CRG (a corporate restructuring group) will serve as chief restructuring officer of the new operating company.

According to Anand Mahindra, Mahindra group is delighted to have been early stage investors in Prana Studios. This move will enable them to increase the scale and complexity of their work. Moreover, according to  Gupta, the acquisition of Rhythm & Hues will allow Prana Studios to offer an even broader platform to their partners.

What this means

For cash outlay of  little more than the price of a home in any upscale Los Angeles neighborhood, a storied FX house has been sold. Indian companies have had other good luck with bottom feeding as in the purchase of undersea cable operator Flag Communications in right after the dot com bust.  Don’t look for this to be a trend however. Integrating a creative team is not a trivial task and the Prana team recognizes that

What this means

The music production company Tips Industries (with headquarters in Mumbai, India) used to be very successful until 2005. According to Kumar Taurani, the founder of the company, people now listen to the radio, watch TV or browse the Internet, but they do not buy cassettes and CD’s of new film songs anymore. Indeed, according to a KPMG (the U.S. audit, tax and advisory services firm), the physical sale of music fell by 19% between 2010 and 2011. According to Ganesh Jain, the founder of Venus Records & Tapes, piracy is the main cause of the death of the Indian film music industry.

Therefore, companies dealing in that business started looking at an alternative solution for revenue. For example, Tips Industries started making films and is currently working on 5 different movies.

Missisauga, Ontario based  Imax opened a new theater in Bangalore, India yesterday with some high-profile help from Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and its own high hopes for success in the Indian market.

Harper gave a ringing endorsement of the company’s large-screen experience, which immerses filmgoers in the action. “If there is a Bollywood wedding filmed in Imax, you’re going to feel like you are right there in the middle of the dancers. You’re going to love it,” Harper told a crowd of guests gathered for the official opening.
While the James Bond thriller Skyfall was showing when Harper visited, Imax has contracted to do its first Bollywood production, Dhoom:3. Imax now has four screens in India and plans to open 13 more by the end of 2013.  Tthe company thinks the Indian market, with its population of 1.2 billion, could support 70 Imax theatres in all, said Preetham Daniel, Imax’s director of sales for India and Southeast Asia.