If everything goes according to plan and if people honour their commitment, the Indywood Film Carnival to be held at Ramoji Film City here between September 24 and 27 will see at least 300 investors, including corporates and high net worth individuals, announcing significant investment in the entertainment sector.
A concept that was announced last year, Indywood in the long run aims at garnering a few 1000s of crores being invested in the sector, including 10,000 screens with advanced 4K projection systems and upgradation of studios and more film schools. “Ideally, we are looking at having multiplexes that will have four or five small screens and one big screen,” said Chairman & CEO of the Aries Group of Companies, Sohan Roy, who came up with Indywood.
“Once all this happens, we don’t have to worry about imports at all – be it concepts or technology. We have the best of talent, but when it comes to technology, we are at least 25 years behind Hollywood. What is required is infrastructure in place to make everything that is needed by the film industry, right here,” he said. Interestingly, an Aries multiplex screen in Trivandrum was the only one across India to project S.S. Rajamouli’s multi-lingual blockbuster Bahubali (Tamil) in 4K resolution.
“I expect the Bahubali sequel to be beamed with 4K in at least 300 screens across the country. That should fetch more revenues as people are ready to pay for superior viewing experience. For example, we screened the blockbuster for 90 days and got collections of Rs. 3.5 crore, the largest from a single screen,” he said, to prove his point. “While we are shooting in 4K or 6K, it comes down to 2K in post-production and ultimately, most projections are happening in 1K only,” he regretted.
The carnival will have different components like a beauty contest, screening of award-winning films, investors’ meet, technology expo and the like. “We need to give confidence to the consortium of corporates that we are developing, that they can productively and safely invest a portion of their branding budgets in the entertainment sector to develop badly-needed infrastructure,” Mr. Roy said, summing up.
