When do you expect the entertainment market to be more mature?
When more corporates enter. Corporates think only about money. There are no egos there.
Why did Moser Baer decide to enter production? Is it again an extension of the home video market?
It is logical for us to enter production too. Anyway, we are in the content business. Then, why don’t we produce content ourselves? It makes sense.
Is it a strategy of Moser Baer to tie up with production houses and make films like you did in Tamil?
Not at all. What we did with Prakashraj’s Duet Films was for only three films. Now, we are doing on our own. In Hindi, we produce our own films and release them.
How many films a year? How much do you want to invest in production?
We have so far invested Rs 80-90 crore (Rs 800-900 million). Right now, there are 6 films in the making in Tamil. That means a film in 6-8 weeks time. In Hindi, 5 films will come out one by one. Every three months, there will be one film. We will produce films in Telugu, Bengali and Marathi too.
But core business will be home video at present. We consider filmmaking is an art. We will make good commercially viable films.
How big is the entertainment industry in India right now?
If you take films alone, audio and video put together is Rs 8,000 crore (Rs 80 billion). It’s a $2-billion business. This is expected to grow to $5 billion in the next two years and by 2012, it will be $8 billion.
The high growth is because Hindi films have opened up a huge market. No longer are people talking about Rs 20 crore (Rs 200 million) collection. Last year, four films of Akshay Kumar collected Rs 500 crore (Rs 5 billion). Race collected Rs 120 crore (Rs 1.20 billion) in two weeks. Rajnikanth’s Sivaji, a Tamil film, collected Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion)!
The biggest case study in Tamil is Billa. Its opening collection was Rs 12 crore (Rs 120 million) in the 1st week alone. So, the market is opening up hugely.
We are not in a hurry. We will be an integrated entertainment company. Our vision is very clear; we want to be the most admired entertainment company in India.
Image: People at music store in New York. | Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
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