Mumbai: Mukta Arts has appointed a leading international consultant to look into the feasibility of the company's Rs 25 crore Film Training Institute project. The company is in the process of identifying land along the Western Express Highway in Mumbai, for this purpose. The Institute should be fully functional by the end of 2002. The focus of the institute will be on commercial cinema. Mukta Arts, however, is yet to decide on the duration of the courses. "The options are most likely to be a two year course or a crash course or a mixture of the two," said Mukta Arts executive director Parvez Farooqui.Mukta Arts is producing three Hindi serials, including a daily soap and is currently in talks with private satellite channels for telecasting these shows. While `Detective' is being directed by Karan Razdan, `Zameer' has Lekh Tandon as the director. Apart from these two weeklies, Mukta Arts is producing a daily soap opera. "We haven't yet decided on the name of the soap. We plan to go on air by the year-end," said Mr Farooqui. Audeus, a post-production studio from Mukta Arts, will go fully operational by April, 2001, with the addition of music recording and final mixing facilities.
Mukta Arts is targeting a revenue of Rs 1.5 cr for the current year through Audeus. "The objective of setting up Audeus is to finish all post production work under one roof. Currently, Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad is the only other studio which offers a complete mix of pre and post production facilities." Mukta Arts has hired the services of Andy Monro, the international acoustic designer for Audeus. "Mission Kashmir", "Fiza"and Rakesh Mehra's "Aks" starring Amitabh Bachchan are some of the recent projects for which post production work was done at Audeus. Mukta Arts plans to release "Yaddein", starring Hrithik Roshan, in August 2001. The movie is being directed by Subhash Ghai. The banner will also be producing Satish Kaushik's "Badhai Ho Badhai" and Prakash Jha's "Rahul."
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.