Mumbai, the home of Bollywood, will from this week have its very own film studios to rival those in Culver City, where Hollywood stardust gets made. The Anil Ambani-owned Reliance MediaWorks (RMW) is hoping that the company’s new studios business will attract filmmakers from the US and Europe to the country’s movie capital.
Film City, the heart of what is formally known as Hindi cinema, will now host India’s most modern studios, and promises to meet international standards, down to the very smallest safety detail.
RMW Studios, spread across seven acres, will have eight stages built to stringent acoustical and structural standards comparable to those in Hollywood – from allowing full truck access onto stages to even fire safety regulations and security measures that abide by Los Angeles County Fire Department rules.
The first phase, comprising of three stages and costing over $22m, will be operational by this week. The second phase is expected to be ready by August.
As well as shooting energetic dance sequences, Romeo and Juliet style tragic love stories and action-packed fighting scenes typical to Bollywood movies, it is hoped that alongside Indian movie directors and producers, foreign filmmakers will now set their sights on India.
Anil Arjun, chief executive of RMW, which already operates India’s largest cinema chain by number of screens, BIG Cinemas, said:
There is a severe shortage of high quality infrastructure in Mumbai and this need gap becomes even more acute every year with the constant increase in big budget film, broadcast and advertising commercial productions. These Studios are a one stop solution that blends infrastructure with technology, experience and aesthetics and a prominent step a strategy to increase out footprint across the entire entertainment service value chain.
India’s domestic movie industry makes around 900 films a year, compared to the 100 made in the US, making Bollywood the world’s most prolific film-producing country.
But given the low rate of box-office hits – less than a quarter of them break even. Bollywood’s share in the global $300bn film industry is a mere $3.5bn. If Mumbai can better the movies it produces it is hoped that this will carry across continents.
Alongside this, Arjun added that that RMW Studios have the potential to garner revenues up to 10 per cent of the company’s turnover and said that foreign filmmakers could cut their production costs by up to 15 per cent.
Oliver Stone, the American film director and screenwriter who got a preview of the studios during his recent visit, said to the Economic Times newspaper that “after what I have seen here, there is a possibility of me coming back to make a movie here, after all.”
India is infamous for its poor infrastructure from roads to hospitals which often do not meet international standards and foreign investors have long been discouraged from putting money into the country. In India’s biggest cities, where power cuts are an everyday occurence, foreign multinationals often invest huge amounts in backup power generators in order to secure consistent electricity. All this is likely to add to RMW’s costs in its attempt to rival Hollywood studio conditions.
Now RMW hopes that high-technology films such as Mission Impossible 4, which is having its India-based scenes shot in the Vancouver Convention Centre in Canada, can now be shot at the company’s new studios in Mumbai.
As Mumbai develops the world class infrastructure that Los Angeles boasts, Bollywood can start to think in terms of quality as well as quantity, attracting global talent and investment to its shores.
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