Starring screen

ENTERTAINMENT: A new factory but a multiple formula to keep the BO on a high.

Percept Picture Company (PPC) is counting the days as it readies to unleash a busy (and probably breathtaking) calendar for 2007. A line up of 22 films from the stables of directors like Madhur Bhandarkar, Nagesh Kukunoor, Priyadarshan, David Dhawan, Aneez Bazmee and Ram Gopal Varma, as well as plans to get into television production, have PPC's plate full for 2007-08.

Projects that have Mahesh Ramanathan, CEO, all fired up include Bhandarkar's Traffic Signal, which is ready for release, and Hanuman 2 that is set for a Diwali release in 2007. Filming has already started for Priyadarshan's movie Dhol starring Kunal Khemmu, Tusshar Joshi and Sharman Joshi.

"When you have films like Shoojit Sircar's Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Johnny Walker on the floor (shooting begins in April) and Nagesh Kukunoor's Tasveer, where Akshay Kumar leads the way (shooting begins in May), you have all the right reasons to celebrate," he says.

Other upcoming ventures are RubaRu, 50 Lac, Kabootar, MP3, Forest, Malamaal Weekly 2 and Kukunoor's Aashayein. All these films will be made on budgets of Rs 6-20 crore and completed next year.

The strategy is clearly aimed at multiple genres rather than "multiplex hits" that have been Percept's formula in the last two years. "We had a great tryst at the box office run with films like Corporate, Dor, Page3, Hanuman and Malamaal Weekly. But commercial success does matter to us," he says. Projects with David Dhawan and Anees Bazmee are expected to reach screens by end-2007.

A part of Percept Holdings and a fast evolving entertainment brand in content and distribution, the company invested Rs 55 crore in 2005-06 and is expected to pump in Rs 70 crore in 2007.

"Over the next two years, we will invest Rs 100 crore and hope to garner at least 40 per cent return on investments," asserts Ramanathan.

Television production is next on the agenda. "They will be directed by the likes of Madhur Bhandarkar for mainstrean television, and we are looking at both fiction and non-fiction formats," he reveals.

PPC is already talking with entertainemnt channels for its 2007 TV foray. Industry estimates indicate that the branded entertainment market for films is currently at around Rs 200-225 crore, and by 2008 it is expected to reach Rs 800 crore. Claims PPC, "We will capture the lion's share of it by 2008." Let the show begin.