Disney India is planning to enter the live entertainment space and will launch theatre adaptation of the famed Broadway musical 'Beauty and the Beast' here from October.
"This is our first venture in live entertainment space here. The team has been working on it for the past two years. We will be doing the shows in October to December," Disney India managing director Siddharth Roy Kapur told reporters here today.
"The October-December season is a very festive period and it is the right time to do the show. We will take a call of doing more shows once we are done with the first season," he added.
He, however, declined to share investment details saying, "it will be fairly a significant amount when it comes to live entertainment. It would be approximately the size of a mid-sized movie."
Kapur said the story of Beauty and the Beast tends to resonate better with many cultures and this is the first show that Disney does in many countries.
He added that if the show is received well then they will look at bringing the other theatrical productions.
The Beauty and the Beast musical will be completely developed locally, while retaining the original script and music of the Broadway show, he said.
"We have conducted auditions across five markets and we had more than 8,000 entries to participate in the show. Over 1,000 physical auditions were conducted and finally there is a lead cast of 18 best theatre performers," Kapur said.
The 130-minute production will be in English, and will have select shows at the NSCI (National Sports Club of India) in Mumbai in October end and at the Thyagaraj Sports Complex in Delhi in December.
Kapur said there is a huge potential for such shows here and will look at other cities going forward.
"This run is restricted to Mumbai and Delhi, because those are the two centres which have the most potential to succeed. But we will definitely be looking at taking it to other cities. We would like to popularise what is happening in Mumbai and Delhi in other cities, he said.
The live entertainment industry is estimated to be around USD 1 billion in the country.
Kapur said in the future they will look to have Indian concepts as well.
"We do create a lot of local concepts in India. I do think in the future, given how this market develops, we might look at adapting live-action movies at one stage as well," he said.
