Reliance partners Bollywood's Top Film Family

In India there is no greater or more popular actor than Amitabh Bachan (know simly as Big B) and he heads a family that includes his successful-in-his-own-right son Abhishek and his daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai (Miss Universe 1994), as well as wife Jaya. We learn today that Reliance BIG Entertainment has struck a major deal with them. From THR.com:

Reliance Big Entertainment, the film arm of the Indian conglomerate courting Steven Spielberg and other top Hollywood names, strengthened its Bollywood roots Wednesday by forming a pact with India's "first family" of filmmaking. RBE, a division of Reliance ADA, will launch a production entity with Amitabh Bachchan and his family of actors to produce films and television content, president Rajesh Sawhney saidtold The Hollywood Reporter. "If we want to engage globally, we have to engage with Hollywood. And that means engaging with talent," Sawhney said.

And

The new unnamed RBE-Bachchan entity will see RBE handle finance, marketing, distribution and other management issues while "the Bachchans will focus on creative aspects," Sawhney said. Without providing investment figures, he termed the agreement "long-term and open-ended." The Times of India speculated that the deal could be worth about $300 million, but Sawhney dismissed the figure as "baseless," adding that the investments "really depend on the nature of projects, which are still to be finalized."

So it is Big B meets BIG Entertainment. Quite the suitable match really. Big B writes about it on his own blog:

Because of the announcement of the Reliance Entertainment and our tie up, there was media bombardment from all sections. The phone was filled with queries and requests for answers and talk ins and bites from the electronic community. They are all friends and i consider it common courtesy to respond to them even if I am completely unable to comply with their requests.

Though for all things Bachan, log on to TheBachans.com

Being back in London briefly after Cinema Expo, I was amazed by how many people had read about the Reliance-Spielberg-DreamWorks discussions. It really has put India and Reliance on the world map.