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Business News/ Industry / Media/  Haasan-Banijay tie-up rides on budget’s digital content push
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Haasan-Banijay tie-up rides on budget’s digital content push

Haasan-Banijay tie-up will span various genres, in fiction and non-fiction formats
  • In India, the Banijay Group is led by television veteran Deepak Dhar who partnered with the French company in 2018 to expand its operations to India and South-East Asia
  • Kamal Haasan’s production house, Raaj Kamal Films International, plans to bring out a string on films and web series in south Indian languages through its collaboration with Banijay Group. (HT)Premium
    Kamal Haasan’s production house, Raaj Kamal Films International, plans to bring out a string on films and web series in south Indian languages through its collaboration with Banijay Group. (HT)

    Veteran film actor Kamal Haasan has tied up with the Indian arm of Paris-based independent content creation company Banijay Group for a slate of film, television and web projects. Starting with Tamil, the collaboration that will extend to other south Indian languages comes on the back of Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposing to link 100,000 gram panchayats with fibre-to-home internet connectivity in 2020-21 through telecom infrastructure provider BharatNet.

    The finance minister in her budget speech on Saturday, proposed to allocate Rs. 6,000 crore for the expansion of BharatNet, a move that according to industry experts will boost regional language content streaming, audio and video, in India’s small towns.

    The Haasan Banijay tie-up will span various genres as well as fiction and non-fiction formats. In India, the Banijay Group is led by television veteran Deepak Dhar who partnered with the French company in 2018 to expand the former’s operations to India and south east Asia.

    Banijay and Haasan’s production house Raaj Kamal Films International have also partnered with Chennai-based distribution company Turmeric Media Networks Pvt Ltd.

    Raaj Kamal is a 40-year old company that has produced several Haasan hits like Thevar Magan (1992), Chachi 420 (1997), Vishwaroopam (2013) and others. Incorporated in 2016, Turmeric is into distribution, having acquired multiple language rights of Tamil blockbusters like Mersal and Remo for satellite release.

    “The idea is to get our energies better channelised by this synergy. I have been involved in all kinds of genres in my 60-year career, and even here, you name the genre and we’ll attempt it, we will try and bring whatever expertise we can, to the table," Haasan said in an interview to Mint. The language barrier, he added, has been broken a long time back and content creators have to only recognise that people would like to be included in the joy(of storytelling) so they want something they can identify with.

    “The whole world is curious, so the more ethnic you become, the more universal you seem," Haasan said.

    Like is the case with the films that Raaj Kamal produces, Haasan will be part of the cast only when required but will otherwise be involved in all other creative aspects of the film and series.

    Dhar said the web series and original films they create will travel to Banijay’s international audiences. “I think the timing is just right for creators like us to push a lot of great ideas and stories," Dhar said adding that as a company, Banijay believes in supporting and building scale so if a project needs a certain backing, it will play at the same at a global level.

    Banijay is an independent content creation group for television and multimedia platforms. Spread across entities in seventeen territories, its library includes programmes such as Keeping up with the Kardashians, crime drama series Underbelly and ABC’s reality television program Wife Swap. In December 2019, the French production and distribution giant had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire 100% of the equity of Endemol Shine Group globally.

    To be sure, Haasan and Banijay’s focus on Tamil and south Indian languages makes sense given that the next phase of online video consumption in India is likely to be driven by regional languages. According to the Ficci-EY media and entertainment industry report 2019, Google claims that 97% of content on its YouTube platform is now consumed in local languages, and a similar trend was seen across most of the streaming platforms in India, all of whom claimed that over 90% of content consumption on their platforms was in regional languages.

    This trend is driven by the faster growing rural Internet-using population, as well as increased time spent by rural audiences on their phones on entertainment as compared to urban audiences, the report said. All major streaming platforms, including American players like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have not just invested in a rich library of regional language movies but are looking at both originals as well as user interfaces, subtitling and dubbing in multiple local languages. Indian players like Hotstar, ALTBalaji and ZEE5 are also aggressive players in the regional space.

    “If implemented, this will act as a tremendous boost to accelerating the reach of regional content, both audio and video, especially in small towns," Jehil Thakkar, partner at Deloitte India, had said referring to the budget proposal for digital connectivity.


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    ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    Lata Jha
    "Lata writes about the media and entertainment industry for Mint, focusing on everything from traditional film and TV to newer areas like video and audio streaming services. She loves movies and spends a lot of her free time watching them, which makes her job both fun and a bit of a challenge. Lata tries to find and write about things in the entertainment world that most people don't notice, even though a lot of people in her country are really into movies and entertainment news often just talks about the glamorous side of things. "
    Catch all the Industry News, Banking News and Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.
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    Published: 03 Feb 2020, 08:08 AM IST
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