Kerala channel war hots up with megastars’ entry

Hari S Kartha in Thiruvananthapuram

Malayalam megastars Mammooty and Mohanlal are thinking small. With Mohanlal’s entry through his venture Visual Magic Pvt Ltd in the TV channel business, both actors are now competing for eyeballs for their small screen ventures.

While Mammooty has been chairman of Malayalam Communications Ltd, which runs the Kairali channel, ever since its inception one year ago, Mohanlal’s Visual Magic has now tied up with another Malayalam channel Asianet.

Mohanlal has floated a new venture, Visual Magic Pvt Ltd which has entered into a strategic alliance with Asianet Communications Ltd headed by NRI entrepreneur Reji Menon. As the first project of the Visual Magic-Asianet combine, a full-fledged feature film in Malayalam for children is on the cards with Mohanlal in the lead role. The film will be dubbed into several other Indian languauges.

Visual Magic, in association with Asianet, will be taking up more innovative media projects in due course, the actor said. Also, there is a proposal to focus on the Internet and host Websites for children with video-streaming facilities using state-of-the-art technology, he added. The Visual-Magic-Asianet combine is, meanwhile, looking for a foreign tie-up too. Discussions are on with numtv.com, which has a strong presence in US and Europe.

Visual Magic will strive to cater to the needs of children, providing them infotainment, with thrust on culture and tradition, which, according to Mohanlal are alien to the new generation. Programmes would also be designed to bring out the latent talent in children, he said.

Based on the popular collection of legends in Malayalam, Iytheehyamala by Kottarathil Sankunni, a five-episode TV serial is also being planned, with five leading directors in Malayalam cinema directing one episode each.

Visual Magic is also looking at production of annimation films and the making DVDs on classics like Karnabharam, the Sanskrit play conceived and directed by Kavalam Narayan Panicker starring Mohanlal. The play was recently enacted in Delhi and was the first stage performance by Mohanlal, ever since he took to acting in films.
Mohanlal denied there was any feud between him and Mammooty.
The tie-up with Asianet was never to take on Mammooty or the Kairali channel of which Mammooty is the helmsman, Mohanlal clarified. It was only natural that more film personalities had started identifying with channels and the small screen, he argued, although it need not necessarily reflect the crisis in the film industry
Mohanlal, however, declined to go into the financial details of his new venture. He only disclosed that the first production, the children’s film would have an investment of Rs 60 lakh. This could even touch Rs 1 crore.