Hollywood re-assessing
attitude towards India: Variety March
24, 2008
Mumbai, (IANS) Hollywood investors are now "reassessing their previous cool
attitude" towards India and major players like Viacom, Universal, Dream Works
and Warner Bros. prefer to invest in the Indian entertainment industry compared
to China, says Hollywood trade magazine Variety.
Although India started the process of economic reforms rather belatedly as
compared to China, but it has since opened up to the world much faster than the
Chinese have done as far as the entertainment business is concerned, it says.
While China is still wary of allowing foreign companies a stake of any
significant size in its entertainment sector, Indian entertainment corporate
entities are welcoming foreign direct investment (FDI) and entering into joint
business deals with their foreign counterparts with a vengeance.
A report in Variety said: "Although China is too big and growing too fast to
ignore, it's India that comes out on top when attracting coin from financial
investors and industry alike."
With the Korean film industry losing its shine of late, that of Japan being too
steady to welcome new moves at this stage and the Chinese proving to be
un-accommodative, Hollywood investors, according to Variety, are now
"reassessing their previous cool attitudes" towards India.
Major Hollywood studios, like Viacom, NBC, Universal, Dream Works, besides
Warner Bros., Sony and Disney, have already made sizeable investments in India's
entertainment sector.
Warner Bros., for example, recently called off a deal it had signed with a
Chinese production firm.
Variety quoted Ashok Amritraj as saying that while his Hyde Park Entertainment
was close to launching local production deals in India, Korea and Japan, he
"could not figure how to do this in China yet".
Media baron, Rupert Murdoch, put it succinctly when he told Variety: "Trying to
build an entertainment business in China is simply too hard."
Incidentally, Weinstein Co., which controls US $285 million Asian movie fund,
recently had to call off the shooting of its period production "Shanghai"
because the Chinese authorities did not like the script, especially the
insinuations about Chinese-Japanese collaboration.
And this after the production team had already built a US $3- million set in the
city of Shanghai for the movie.
