Warner and Sony go to India, Adlabs goes to Malaysia

Having previously dipped their corporate toe in the warm flow of the Indian film production river, both Warner Bros and Sony Pictures are now taking the full plunge in. Sony has signed a three-picture deal with a major Indian production studio in a deal worth Rs 2.5bn ($62m), while Warners is pursuing a remake of The Wedding Crashers. From THR.com (as the-trade-magazine-formerly-known-as-the-Hollywood-Reporter now insists on calling itself):

In what would mark the first authorized remake of a Hollywood film here, Warner Bros. Pictures India is in discussions with Bollywood banner Orion Pictures for an official remake of the 2005 comedy "Wedding Crashers."

Orion Pictures, headed by producer Mukesh Talreja and director Nikhil Advani, is co-producing WBPI's Bollywood debut with veteran filmmaker Ramesh Sippy, "Chandni Chowk to China."

"We are in talks with Orion Pictures on the possibility of remaking 'Wedding Crashers' in India. Orion has shown keen interest, and they have lined up some of the best talent for this project," WBPI managing director Blaise Fernandes told The Hollywood Reporter on Monday, adding that a deal has not yet been signed.

Somebody at WB must have finally woken up to the fact that if Indian film producers see a film they like they will take the concept and make it their own. Without buying the re-make rights. That is how Three Men and a Baby became Heyy Babyy while Love, Actually morphed into Salaam-e-Ishq and most recently this Diwali's big Hindi release Ghajini is a remake of Tamil film also called Ghajini, which, if you liked this story of how "A man, suffering from short-term memory loss, uses notes, tattoos and photo's to hunt down his girlfriend's killer", Amazon suggests you might also like Memento. If you can't beat them, beat them to the re-make at least.


Sony Pictures has meanwhile gone one bolder, after the so-so performance of Saawariya, with a three picture deal that will put them firmly on the Bollywood map, as well as buying world-wide distribution rights to Hindi comedy Meerabai Not Out. According to Variety:

Uday Singh, Sony Pictures India topper added, "Sony has several established platforms in India -- TV, theatrical distribution, music and homevideos. We intend to put all these behind the film and make it one of this summer's biggest attractions."

Amongst other ventures, Sony Television India is currently screening the newly created IPL (Indian Premiere League) cricket matches that has viewers glued to their sets and advertising rupees pouring into the channel's coffers. In relation to the co-production deal, Times of India adds that:

Sony's investment sets a new benchmark for big budget movie making in India. In its deal with PNC, the first of the three movies will be a comic extravaganza set in Las Vegas. Titled Raghupati Raghav Raja Ram , the film is budgeted at Rs 70 crore. The two other films are in a conceptual stage. Says Pritish Nandy of PNC: ‘‘An investment by a major international studio like Sony shows the changing paradigm of Indian motion picture business.''

This comes not long after Disney went Bollywood, 20th Century Fox set up base in Nitin Desai Studios and NBC Univ bought a $150m stake in NDTV, leaving just Paramount still outside looking in. This is ironic, as the best article on Hollywood pushing into Bollywood (New York Times' Hollywood Starts Making Bollywood Films in India) quotes the aforementioned studio towards the end of the article:

“The importing of American films into India is not filling a gap,” Gareth Wigan, a vice chairman of Columbia TriStar, the Sony division that produced the film, said by telephone from Los Angeles. “You’re not bringing a dish to a bare table. You’re bringing a dish to a table where you have to move a lot of other dishes to fit in, and that’s not true in a lot of other countries.”

And so begins a strange competition to make the best Bollywood film, pitting Hollywood against India’s own studios, which make more movies and sell more tickets than any film industry in the world.

With international revenues increasingly important to the conglomerates that own the major studios, Hollywood wants to tap into India’s market. But indigenous films captured 95 percent of Indian box office sales in 2006, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. The figure is identical for domestic pictures in the United States, but just 35 percent in France, 33 percent in Japan and 12 percent in Britain, according to 2005 data published by two scholars, David Waterman and Sang-Woo Lee.

“There is no country on the planet, other than India and the United States, that approaches that level of domestic business,” Andrew Cripps, the president of Paramount Pictures International, said by telephone from Los Angeles. And so Paramount, too, is contemplating Bollywood productions.

Still contemplating, it seems.

Meanwhile Adlabs/Reliance has conquered another territory with the announcement that it has acquired control of the third largest cinema chain in Malaysia. From THR.com's hard working India correspondent Nyay Bhushan:

Mumbai-based Adlabs Films, which runs India's largest theatrical chain along with holding interests in film production, said Monday it has acquired a majority stake in Malaysia's Lotus Five Star Cinemas.

"We cannot reveal financial details or the equity structure but, as a result of this deal, we have acquired a controlling stake in the company which runs 51 screens," Reliance Entertainment senior vp Anil Arjun said in an interview. Adlabs is part of Reliance.

Arjun added that the newly acquired screens -- which will make Adlabs the third largest chain in the country -- will continue to show a mix of market leader Hollywood product in addition to Malaysian- and Indian-language films.

Add this to the 150+ screens in India and 240+ screens in the US, plus some more South Asian territories coming up and this is starting to look like a cinema empire in the making. Some more analysis is offered by Patrick Frater in Variety:

Malaysia is one of the fastest growing theatrical markets in Asia but remains significantly underscreened. According to government agency FINAS, the country had just 341 screens in mid-2007.

Lotus mainly runs small cinemas outside the biggest cities and has itself been adding properties over the last year. In terms of screen numbers alone it ranks behind Golden Screen Cinemas and TGV, in which Hong Kong's Golden Harvest was invested until last year, and ahead of Singapore-owned Cathay Cineplexes.

Adlabs' move is not the first into Malaysia by an Indian exhibition group. Pyramid Saimira, which operates over 250 screens in India, unveiled a joint venture early last year with Malaysian company Asian Integrated Industries. Besides cinema ownership, that deal is intended to create a network of digital cinemas and provide them with distribution services.

No wonder that the parent company Reliance Big Entertainment is "in talks with private equity funds such as US-based private equity fund Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company (KKR), billionaire investor Carl Icahn, Japan’s Softbank and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority for divestment of 10% equity" for "an estimated asking value...in the range of $500 million," according to the Economic Times.