English entertainment channels are drumming up their visibility and consumer engagements by tying with Hollywood studios. For television channels it is about attracting eyeballs while for Hollywood movies it is about ‘word of mouth’ publicity for the movie.
Sony Pix, the English entertainment arm of MSM, is the latest which is premiering latest James Bond movie Spectre a day before its official theatricals launch in India. Sony Pix is screening Daniel Craig-Monica Belluci starrer Spectre in 11 screens across the country on Thursday as part of its consumer engagement exercise. Sony PIX ran a 10 Days contest from November 5th to 15th, where it gave its fans a chance to participate and win tickets for this action- packed movie.
Sony Pix has a property called Pix Premier nights under which it has done about 5-6 new releases. Sony Pix has previously hosted Pix Premiere Nights for Robocop (2014), The Hobbit: The battle of the five armies (2014), Amazing Spider Man 2 (2014) and Fantastic Four (2015) among others
“Most Hollywood movies make more money outside of US. As much as 60-65 per cent of revenues for blockbusters come outside of the US than from the country. Markets such as India, Japan, China and BRICS are growing for Hollywood. Interestingly, the number of Hollywood movies that crossed the Rs 100 crore mark in India is significant,” Saurabh Yagnik, VP & Business Head, Sony Pix and AXN told Business Line.
The company said that any Hollywood movie which does well on box office also tends to demonstrate the same on television viewership.
Yagnik pointed that most Hollywood studios have a distribution arm in India. “They are coming to India and directly distributing and marketing their films in India. This smells of potential in Hollywood movie business. We have noticed, if something does well in box office than we see it doing well on television as well and we hence we benefit from such tie-up,” he added.
Asked if it will be bringing movies from NBC-Universal deal, he said, “Though it is same company, but the studio business is different from distribution. We are looking to get movies. However, this kind of initiative is independent of our commercial deals.”
According to a FICCI-KPMG report, Indian film industry's total size is estimated at $2 billion projected to reach $3.6 billion by 2018. Hollywood and foreign films stands at less than 10 per cent of that market.