Hollywood meets Bollywood in new joint venture

Relativity B4U will create and distribute films, television programmes and digital media content

The recent success of movies like The Lunchbox and 2 States has proven that the overseas audiences are lapping up Indian content. On the other hand, the fabulous run by Hollywood movies like Gravity, Ironman 3, The Avengers and 300: Rise of the Empire have validated the foreign studios' thrust on the Indian market.

Taking a lesson from these recent trends, Hollywood studio Relativity Media entered has the Indian market through a joint venture with media house B4U, owned by Lakshmi Mittal, Kishore Lulla, and Gokul Binani. The announcement was made on Saturday at the ongoing Cannes Film Festival in France.

The 50:50 joint venture will look at content creation and distribution across films, television and digital media. The new entity, called Relativity B4U, will invest $100 million in projects over the next couple of years. The venture will be headed by B4U CEO Ishan Saksena and will be overseen by a board of directors with equal representation from both companies.

ACCORD FOR CONTENT

• Distribute future Relativity films and other contents in India and its surrounding regions
• Co-finance, co-produce and distribute Indian language films and television shows as well as acquire projects in the US and Indian markets
• Distribute third-party content in India and select Bollywood films in the US
• Create and launch a new pay TV channel in India focused on Hollywood content in English and Hindi
• Launch 'RelaTV' – a digital streaming technology platform to deliver short- and long-form content to Indian consumers
• Co-produce Hollywood films, including The Best of Me

Relativity is engaged in film production, financing and distribution, television, sports management, music publishing and digital media. The studio has produced, distributed or structured financing for nearly 200 motion pictures, generating more than $17 billion in worldwide box office revenue.

Relativity and B4U will co-invest and distribute Bollywood film and television productions, apart from distributing and marketing Relativity’s Hollywood slate beginning with the romantic drama The Best of Me, in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. Initial plans suggest that the venture will distribute nearly 12 movies from the Relativity slate over the next year in India. It also plans four to five productions over the next two years, starting next year.

The venture will also look at launching a television channel in India, which will have Indian content and international content remade to suit India. Work on the channel is on and B4U has applied for a licence. Additionally, it will launch “RelaTV”,  a digital streaming platform to deliver short and long form content.

“This strategic partnership represents an exciting opportunity for Relativity to significantly expand our presence in this vibrant and growing marketplace while creating a bridge for developing and sharing content between Hollywood and Bollywood,” said Ryan Kavanaugh, CEO, Relativity.

For B4U, it is also a way to revive its presence in the country. Having launched two channels, B4U Music and B4U Movies, the network has not been able to gain traction. Plagued by a competitive environment and reducing margins, speculation has been rife about the channels shutting down. The venture  with Relativity will help revive the existing channels and also give B4U network access to differentiated content.

“The focus till now has been the overseas market, where we have done very well. We have now started to focus on the India operations more aggressively and the (existing) channels have started doing better in the past 10 months or so. Our joint venture provides a platform to bring the best of Relativity’s intellectual property, production skills, and unique monetising strategies to India, while also providing Indian talent access to global audiences,”Saksena said.

This is not the first time that an overseas studio has tied up with a network in India. In 2011, Anil Ambani's Reliance Broadcast Network joined hands with CBS Networks to launch three channels, BIG CBS Love, BIG CBS Prime and BIG CBS Spark. However, the channels were taken off the air within two years when they could not monetise the content and increase viewership in the English general entertainment segment. The positioning of the channels was also a factor that affected the ratings and hence the advertising and subscription revenues.

However, Kavanaugh is confident that the Relativity B4U venture is in a much better position. He pointed out that the partnership had a far wider scope. “Moreover, our library of films and television series is much much bigger. Also, we are not looking at simply taking American content and dumping it in the Indian market. We shall make sure the content we bring to India suits the market. Someone like CBS can be egocentric and would only want  to showcase original content. That is not the case with us,” he said.

The venture plans to make use of mobile internet not only form a consumption standpoint, but also as a trial medium. The initial plans indicate that television content may be carried on the mobile medium for a test run. The idea is to make the content platform agnostic and available as widely as possible.

While the timeline for the channel’s launch is not yet decided, the first movie under the venture to be distributed will be Best of Me, inspired from Nicholas Sparks' novel by the same name. It will release in India along with the US on October 17, 2014. In addition, the joint venture will make Relativity’s upcoming comedy, currently titled “Untitled Armored Car Project” and starring Owen Wilson and Zach Galifianakis,  for the Indian market with a Bollywood director and starring Indian actors.