Hinduja Group's Hollywood plans Post-Cannes, the future looks bright for Indian films

Kryztoff de Breza in Cannes

India's Hinduja Group has ambitious plans to venture into the global film industry, especially Hollywood.

The vehicle is Hinduja TMT Limited. HTMT co-chairman Ramkrishan Hinduja told rediff.com in an exclusive interview at the posh Hinduja villa in the southern French city of Cannes recently that HTMT will soon be a major player in several cinema markets of the world.

After a reorganisation of its operations, HTMT brought all its media assets under one banner, IN Network. This now serves as the node for the group's media activities, including movies, television and a recently launched on and off-line business.

A soft launch of IN Network took place at the recent 55th Cannes Film Festival that concluded Sunday, May 26, in the southern French city.

The company which already produces films in India will soon up the scale of films produced. "We are structuring In Network as a studio along the lines of the US majors. We aim to make a minimum of 15-20 movies a year. We want to be able to take them across the distribution chain," states Hinduja.

The company's international operations, headquartered in Geneva, will finance foreign films. "We have already done some film financing internationally. We are looking at making investments and finance structures with movies in Hollywood, both on the studio side and the independent producers. We have also advanced stage negotiations," says Hinduja

But Hinduja says the company will not rush into deals. "We want to make sure our deals are financially justifiable, with reasonable risks and offer commensurate returns. I guess the future will become clearer once we have a few projects off the ground. We are just testing the markets," he says.

Keeping in mind the high costs of production in Hollywood, Hinduja says the investments should be in the range of millions of dollars, adding, "At Cannes fair, we worked with the the US independent as well as majors on consolidating content for the Indian market place. Given the conditional cable access that will be allowed with the new Cable Bill now in the Parliament, our view is that this will allow the Indian viewers to have greater choice and pick the content they like."

Besides buying foreign films, IN Network will also sell its own films. It has a library of over 1500 films and overseas distribution rights for another 2000, says a company official who said that a number of lucrative deals had been struck at Cannes.

Hinduja admits, "We have done more business than we thought," he says, adding that several new markets have opened for Indian films. "Traditionally, Indian films were being sought after by the markets where Indians lived or which had a cultural affinity to India. Now, other markets like continental Europe have expressed keenness to get more involved in Indian content."