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The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group-promoted media and entertainment company, Reliance MediaWorks (RMW), is sharpening its focus on growing its film exhibition business down south through its exhibition chain brand, Big Cinemas, according to its chief executive officer Venkatesh Roddam.
“Southern India has one of the most prolific film markets and I believe it represents the national frenzy for cinema in the most endearing manner. It is one of the most advanced markets and represents a film-going audience like no other. We already have a fairly strong presence across the breadth of this market, and are looking at further strengthening this base through Big Cinemas,” he told Business Standard.
According to Roddam, RMW had been focusing only on the marquee projects (like Endhiran, Mani Ratnam’s Kadali, and Dookudu that it had worked on for VFX) when it came to south India and would be staying clear from the cluttered low-margin commodity markets.
“As far as VFX is concerned, we anyway have almost 50 per cent share of the top A-grade Bollywood films and are the preferred ones to high-end southern films. The strategy at the moment is to consolidate and further hedge this leadership in the days to come,” he added.
Currently, RMW has three fully-operational sound stages (a sound-proof structure used for the production of theatrical film-making and television production, usually located on a secure movie studio property), which have been built according to Hollywood standards, while five additional sound stages will be operational sometime this year. RMW also has three content processing studios – one each in Los Angeles, Mumbai and Navi Mumbai — together employing over 1,000.
Stating that RMW had very recently completed the landmark of processing 400 films, with major films like Gunday, Queen and 2 States being associated with the company this year, Roddam said there was a chunk of mainstream biggies that had been lined up for the latter part of the year.
On the post-production services that RMW was offering for the complete bouquet of channels from Turner International for the South Asia market and any plans to enter into similar collaborations, he said on the back of the successful tie-up with Turner, RMW was looking at offering services for other major television networks as well.
“Deals are being discussed and negotiated at this stage. And, I won’t be able to disclose any further details right now,” he said, adding that RMW was currently working on providing VFX for the hit Hollywood television series Black Sails, a high-sea pirate drama.
