Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Saturday, Jul 14, 2007
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Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Saturday, Jul 14, 2007 ePaper |
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Marketing
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Strategy Industry & Economy - Cinema Adlabs, UTV testing waters in Tamil film industry
Meera Mohanty New Delhi, July 13 The Tamil film industry has always set standards for professionalism, for well in control of budgets, and streamlined productions that have for long been the envy of a more flamboyant but less disciplined Bollywood. Now having corporatised the Hindi film industry, biggies such as Adlabs and UTV are testing waters in the South Indian film industry. UTV and Adlabs have shown interest in working out a production, distribution deal for Kamal Hassan’s next movie Dasavatharam. The movie is 90 per cent complete, and producer ‘Oscar’ Ravichandran is giving the propo sals a serious consideration. Kamal Hassan is also believed to be keen on an association with UTV which has produced movies such as Lagaan and Rang de Basanti and supported them with equally good marketing at interna tional platforms. Mr Siddharth Roy Kapur, Executive Vice-President - Marketing, Distribution & Syndication, UTV, says: “In the last few years, the South market has seen some great films, Tamil film industry taking the lead. The passion and star worship of the audiences is at a completely different level, which makes the market an interesting place. In June this year, we announced our tie-up with Radaan Mediaworks to co-produce films in South Indian languages. Now, we are co-producing Kannamooch i Yenada starring Sathyaraj, Radikaa Sarathkumar, Prithviraj and Sandya, expected to release in July 2007.We are also planning a project with director K.S. Ravikumar.” “We wanted a regional presence outside of the Hindi film industry, and Tamil and Telugu industries were the only ones that seemed interesting and viable in terms of revenues,” said Mr Manmohan Shetty, Chairman and Managing Director, Adlabs. The Reliance ADAG company will be producing a movie with Madhavan in the lead before the year end while its co-production Kireedam, starring Ajith Kumar is ready for release. However, Adlabs has not taken on the distribution respons ibility of its first Tamil venture. “We didn’t want to take all the risk, you could say we are testing the waters,” added Mr Shetty. The company is also partnering in Rajnikant’s daughter’s animation project Su ltan The Warrior. Mr Oscar Ravichandran, who is credited with bringing in a new era in the Tamil film industry by managing to get institutional funding from the IDBI for Anniyan, warns that money alone may not help, “It doesn’t matter how many hundreds of crores they bring, only those with creative ideas will survive here.” Mr Ravi Gupta, CEO, Mukta Arts, agrees, “Frankly, the Tamil film industry is well organised both in terms of funding and distribution, it’s a well-developed, self-contained industry. We are looking at regional cinema, but in Marathi,” he says.
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