Reliance's Billion Dollar Entertainment Baby

The Cannes Film Festival is in full swing but I didn't make it this year. Instead it was my boss' boss who went there to announce Reliance Big Entertainment's Billion Dollar Plan.

While the company has previously been involved in film production and distribution, nothing could have prepared the world for the magnitude of this commitment to making films in India and beyond.

From the Economic Times:

CANNES: Reliance Big Entertainment, the media and entertainment arm of the $75 billion Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group, on Friday announced that it would spend $1 billion on the Indian film and entertainment business over the next 12-15 months.

This is by far the biggest commitment made by an Indian entertainment company for show business. Amid the glitter and glamour at the 61st edition of the Cannes Film Festival at the French Riviera, Reliance Big Entertainment also revealed that 69 films in nine languages would be ready for distribution over the next 18 months. Over a dozen films will be released this year.

"India is uniquely positioned in the global economic order. We believe this is the right time to make this commitment of $1 billion for the film entertainment business," said Amit Khanna, chairman of Reliance Entertainment.

The best coverage of the Cannes event itself comes from the Telegraph of Calcutta:

The Ambanis don’t do things in small ways — and today Anil Ambani chose Cannes to make public what the media had been promised would be information on a “major and unique event”.

The news conference had been organised by DDA, a PR firm which usually handles established American and European clients. In the last few days, its publicists have been calling up journalists to make sure they would be in the Salon Diane of the Majestic Hotel to hear the announcement at 10am today.

It was left to Amit Khanna, chairman of Anil Ambani’s Reliance Entertainment Pvt Ltd, henceforth renamed the Reliance Big Entertainment, to drop the bombshell — the group would invest $1 billion (around Rs 4,250 crore) to change the face of the Indian movie industry as we have known it.

And the ambition is not confined to India alone. My very diligent namesake Mr Frater does a good job of capturing it all in Variety's 'Reliance sets out its very Big ambitions':

The company is expected to follow Sunday with further announcement about relationships and production deals involving Hollywood talent such as Will Smith, Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Bruce Willis. “It is time for Indian companies to step up and take on the world,” Reliance CEO Amit Khanna said.

From THR.com 'Reliance goes Big with billion-dollar unit':

Reliance's empire spans production, distribution, home entertainment and exhibition across the subcontinent and also has outposts in Sri Lanka and Mauritius among others. Khanna said the company plans to open offices in New York and Los Angeles.

Even our own little digital cinema effort got a mention at Cannes and in Variety: 'Unlike other digital cinema initiatives in India, Reliance Big Entertainment and its stock-market listed Adlabs unit, are rolling out fully DCI-compliant 2k systems.'

Yup, that's us. But more on those plans another time. Maybe Cinema Expo.