In these recessionary times, every passing day throws up a new concerning headline. What is even more concerning is the fact that the headlines feature the industry?s big boys taking drastic steps to combat the financial gloom.
The latest biggie is the UK arm of Pathe, among the biggest sales companies and distributors of the world. Pathe has just seen Slumdog Millionaire close on the heels of the film?s super success, yet it has announced a scaling down of theatrical operations and teamed with Warner Bros. Entertainment UK. Pathe will continue to devise the marketing campaigns for its titles though.
View it as you want it?short-term cost cutting as most see it, or a strategic move to find a workable business model for the digital era, as Pathe would like to. There are going to be inevitable redundancies so the former does look like a more accurate diagnosis of the situation.
The new arrangement kicks off with Stephen Frears? Cheri in May.
Logic please?
The poster of Tamil mega star Rajnikanth?s Arasan The Don has an image of Obama and Rajni side by side. Bizarre? Sure, because the US President has/would have absolutely nothing to do with the feature.
Strangely, a phrase in English that reads, ?Black man… big history? accompanies the images. The film is actually a dubbed version of the 1991 Bollywood release, Khoon Ka Karz, co-starring Vinod Khanna, Sanjay Dutt, Dimple Kapadia, Sarika, and Sangeeta Bijlani. The new version releasing this week has been re-cut to boost Rajni?s role.
The move probably stems from recent success stories?dubbed versions of Spiderman 2 and Slumdog Millionaire fared pretty well, though one must bear in mind that both the titles were tent-pole in nature.
While the distributors of Arasan The Don might be upbeat about latching on to this ?dubbed? trend and capitalising on the iconic stature of Rajni in the South, hopefully they haven?t forgotten that the original was a colossal flop!
Money money
In the current times, when everyone is trying to find an answer to the question about where new funding is going to come from into the largely cash-strapped motion picture industry, a Hollywood executive has bared the secret, or so he believes?the mobile telephony sector. In an article I read recently, the executive said that future funding will be tied to technology, and as the film comes in on your mobile via broadband, you?ll be able to run it through your television or project it onto a larger screen.
Time for MIPTV
Film markets and festivals take place every other month making it next to impossible to keep track of all of them. I always provide a lowdown on the significant ones though, the next being MIPTV, which takes off in Cannes later this month.
This market, which provides content creators brilliant exposure to the international broadcast market, is regarded as a serious platform for transacting business, though the industry murmur is that the attendance this year is down by almost 20%. More on MIPTV in the next column.
The author heads marketing, syndication & distribution for the UK & Europe at Studio 18, and can be reached on garg.tan@gmail.com