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The audience for Indian movies abroad is at least 10-million strong. An online channel for film buffs worldwide will be launched next year.
Film buffs worldwide will soon be able to download digitised versions of Indian movies from an online channel that will be launched in Mumbai next year. G.V. Films Ltd., a production house associated with many south Indian hits and some Bollywood ones too, will launch the facility to satisfy the voracious global demand for Indian movies. “Though online downloading of Indian movies has been going on through individuals, it has never been organised or corporatised,” A. Venkata Ramani, a member of the board of directors of G.V. Films, said. “So in that sense ours will be a greenfield venture,” he said. According to company officials, the facility will be launched around April 15 but will not be available in India as the infrastructure needed to support it is still not available in the country. Movie lovers can download the movies by paying between $1-5 a movie, depending on how old the film is and whether it was a big hit— apart from its running time. G.V. Films is known for hit productions in Tamil like Mouna Ragam (1986), Nayakan (1987) and Anjali (1990). It has also bought rights of hundreds of other movies in various other Indian languages. Though the production house has a large library of nearly 6,000 films to pick and chose from, it is in the process of acquiring more movies. “The online facility will allow users to not only view Indian and many foreign-language movies but will also provide games,” Venkata Ramani pointed out. G.V. Films has joined hands with the Singapore-based I-Net Singapore, a MediaCorp group company, for the venture that will have an estimated investment of Rs 150-200 million ($3.2-4.3 million). I-Net Singapore will provide the infrastructure and take home 15-20 per cent of the revenue, Venkata Ramani said. A final agreement with I-Net Singapore over the execution plan for the launch of the facility was reached in October, he added. He said that companies like IBM and Microsoft have offered to provide their technological platform for implementing the facility. According to Venkata Ramani, the audience for Indian movies abroad is at least 10 million strong and the facility will start with a subscriber base of
100,000. — IANS |
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