UTV Software Communications’ (UTV) chairman, Ronnie Screwvala, is stepping up film production and distribution, signing deals with foreign producers, distributors and betting money that his gaming companies will leapfrog his company to become a media and entertainment house to be reckoned with. In a chat with Priyanka Joshi, he explained why convergence was uppermost in his mind. Edited excerpts:
How do you see UTV’s gaming business driving business this year?
The October-December quarter was boosted by our movie revenue, but gaming will drive growth in the next financial year. Gaming is all set to give us around 40 per cent of our revenues this year. After successful game titles like Muramasa and King of Fighters XII in the last two quarters, Ignition Games (a UK-based game developer that was acquired by UTV) has launched Nostalgia, an action role-playing game on the Nintendo DS platform.
Going ahead, Ignition’s line-up for 2010 includes Deadly Premonition, a third-person survival horror action game, due for a release soon in North America on the Xbox 360 console. We don’t have any plans to bring these to India, as the market is non-existent here, but we are confident of making a success of it in major gaming markets like the US. To further drive success for our gaming content, we have tied up for syndication deals for our gaming titles in territories like China, Korea, Russia and Europe.
What about India’s gaming market?
India is a perfect candidate for mobile games that are being developed by UTV’s Indiagames, that commands about 56 per cent of the gaming market in India. During the quarter, Indiagames launched more than 100 games, including those from its own portfolio as well as content from its partners. It has also launched Cricket League of Champions, a cricket-based game for the mobile platform. We think cricket will be a key segment for mobile games in India. In January, Indiagames also inked a deal to offer eight games on Reliance’s DTH platform and that’s an opportunity for the company in the near future.
How will UTV’s movie business support growth in 2010?
The movies’ segment continues to be the key contributor for us. Last quarter, revenues in this vertical grew to Rs 1.07 billion. Now we are set to release up to 12 movies in FY11, including Katrina Kaif-starrer Rajniti and Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Guzarish. This quarter, we will release three movies that will be a mix of small budget and big budget titles. We will release small budget films like Paan Singh Tomar with Irrfan Khan, Rajeev Khandelwal’s Peter Gaya Kaam Se and Phillum City in the next couple of months. So, overall, I see the movie segment contributing up to about half of UTV’s total top line in 2010.
Any plans to get into 3D film-making?
We aren’t going to allow the recent popularity of 3D technology to force us to launch a film. But, we are seeing a lot of infrastructure investment across theatres and the best part is that such a film allows you to charge higher ticket rates that help in monetising the content. A 3D film also means you miss out the ancillary revenues from DVD sales, syndication, etc, as the experience cannot be replicated, which makes 3D a costly proposition for a market like India that is yet to see maturity in the animation category.
UTV Bindass has been raking in some good TRPs. Do you see the trend continuing?
The broadcasting segment remains in the investment mode. But, to give our channels some credit, in about eight quarters, UTV Bindass has positioned itself constantly ahead of MTV, an established brand. Now, our teams need to exercise over monetisation.
