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Purvita Chatterjee

Mumbai, Oct. 29 Big Music & Home Entertainment, part of Reliance Big Entertainment, is planning to sign on more studios to add to its repertoire of big ticket licensee deals for its home video business.

Having signed deals with stalwarts in the entertainment business such as Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros and more recently Dreamworks, it now wants to add others such as Disney and Fox studios to its kitty.

“There are a couple of international studios we are looking at such as Fox and Disney. Currently, these studios have a contract with Excel Videos but once the time for renewal of the contract happens, we would be pitching in,” said Mr Kulmeet Makkar, CEO, Big Music.

Having set up new verticals such as talent management and music publishing, Big Music & Home Entertainment is now looking at the merchandising space with yet another vertical under the ‘BIG’ franchise. “There will be a different vertical for merchandising and we are looking at items such as movie posters, caps and T-shirts mostly for the films produced by us like Rock On,” said Mr Makkar.

Tapping into the non-traditional outlets, Big Music & Home Entertainment would be selling its fare through modern trade outlets.

“We are looking at new distribution avenues with the purpose of having a robust distribution network before trying to acquire content. Today, we do not want to be restricted to the music outlets and are targeting family stores and hypermarkets,” added Mr Makkar.

In fact, considering that Reliance Entertainment has tapped into the entire value chain of the entertainment industry, it is in a position to exploit synergies across its group verticals of which Big Music and Home entertainment forms a part.

“We are already using the Adlabs multiplexes and Reliance Infocomm’s outlets to sell our home and music videos. Besides, Big Flix, the online movie portal, would also be stocking our titles,” added Mr Makkar.

With Big Pictures producing movies, Big Music is expected to be the first buyer of the titles of Bollywood films released from its repertoire.

“We have already started our own studios and would obviously be the first buyer of the Bollywood titles released from this vertical,” claims Mr Makkar.

In the recent past films like Jodha Akbar and Rock On have been produced by Big Pictures.

Big Music & Home Entertainment is targeting a turnover of Rs 100 crore after completing a year in the Rs 850- crore home video industry.

More Stories on : Outlook | Music & Dance | Radio/TV

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