‘Cinema is language agnostic’

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as it is a little premature to talk about it.

How many titles have you acquired and what genres will you be focusing on?

We have acquired a large library of world movies with 450 titles from countries like South Korea, Japan, South Africa, Mexico, Italy, France and Spain. We did not want to neglect English films as they have significant appeal and around 20% of our films will be in English. We have an eclectic mix of almost all genres ranging from drama to suspense and thrillers, with the choicest of family films, Japanese horror films and the best of Asian action movies. Our main focus was on obtaining the best of contemporary and commercially successful films.

Palador Pictures had tied up with UTV for the world cinema venture under the Olive brandname. Did you lose out on many significant titles after the spilt?

No, that happened long ago and Palador Pictures had a library of old movies. Like I mentioned, our motive is to present viewers with international contemporary films that are box office hits and are not less than five years old.

So won’t you be losing out on the segment of viewers who prefer classics?

The demand for new and current movies is much higher as compared to that of classics. People prefer watching good, contemporary cinema on television whereas classics are more like a collector’s item. Recently there was a Satyajit Ray film festival on television, I don’t think it garnered great TRPs. Nobody really has the time to sit through an old film, which is aired on television, people like to purchase DVDs and home videos of old movies and like to watch it at leisure and as per their convenience.

Could you give a perspective on the demand for international cinema in India?