Reliance Entertainment to start Cinema halls' Chain in US

No. It's not an April fool. It's true. Reliance Entertainment is all set to start a chain of Cinema halls called 'Big' in the US that will be showing Hindi movies as well as other regional Indian movies. There will be almost 200 cinema halls under the brandname showing these movies.

Reliance's movie theaters' chain in India is known as Adlabs which Reliance Entertainment had acquired from Manmohan Shetty. But the US chain will be branded as Big, which is also the music label and FM brand of Reliance Entertainment.

From the movie makers' point of view, the project will be welcome only as it will give a better chance to Indian movies in the US as there is a number of Asian viewers in the US.

On the wrong path

Economic Times recently told that the prices of movie VCDs and DVDs were going to be increased again. Companies that had brought down the prices to Rs 145-160 a CD, will be back to Rs 200 again.

In one sentence, if the prices go up, so will the piracy.

Yes. I have seen Jodhaa Akbar on my laptop on a pirated print and I was thinking who would be buying CDs if the pirated versions become so good.

Companies that are relying on the fact that the general Indian public is not aware of e-piracy (movies available on Internet for downloads) cannot do this for long as people are getting more educated day by day and getting what can be the options in the flat world.

The article written by K Muthukumar and Sonali Krishna tells that companies are thinking selling VCDs and DVDs for the same prices won't be able to bring them enough profits and so they should increase the prices. But the fact is that, seeing the low cost of manufacturing, if the prices are brought down, the sale can be increased a lot to get profits the way they want. In fact well designed DVDs can be sold at higher rates to those who want more. Thus there can be profits both ways.

In fact, as far as the article is concerned, there seems to be a lack of homework as the rates of some VCDs and DVDs are wrong as the article quotes the price of Moserbaer DVDs as Rs 49 whereas it starts at Rs 34 itself. Even T-Series is told to be selling discs at Rs 45 that is the price of DVDs only, where the market sells more of VCDs, that are actually priced at Rs 38 only.

Jab We Sell

This has nothing to do with selling or buying of shares and has no relation with the share market. Any relation of words with those used in the share markets is purely coincidental.

This is about a movie. A movie that was a great hit. Of course the movie must be good in order to be a hit. But we know all good movies are not hit. And this 'okay' movie has achieved profits that can make any filmmaker jealous.

Actually this is not about the movie either. This is about marketing, about strategies and setting time frames of when to do what and how to earn the maximum possible money from the movie. This is about business. The business done in the film industry, and about the way it should be done.

Well, this is about 'Jab We Met'. A movie from which I was not hoping much when I went to Raghavendra, our only source of movies besides laptops. It was the first week and the publicity was such that movie was expected to be just time pass.

And that it really was. The movie did really well what it was expected to do - a good time pass, which gave the movie a good publicity through word of mouth. I mean, the results were exceptional in some way. Jab We Met was probably the only movie of the year that increased its collection after second week. Be it the masala filled Om Shanti Om or the touching Taare Zameen Par or the laugh riot Welcome, all have gone down on the box office, week after week. But Jab We Met was different from all these, increasing the number of viewers and thus profits.

On the other hand, the music score of the movie was already good and was being popular day by day. So no doubt the sale of audio CDs and cassettes was good, too.

And as soon as the theatres seemed to come to saturation, television started showing the 'coming soon' ads for the DVDs and VCDs. That too on Moserbaer, making it affordable for everyone, and since the movie came at a time when it was still fresh on people's mind, there were record sales of the DVDs and VCDs of the movie. The DVDs were promoted on TV with beautiful, touching advertisements that were showing less of movie and instead, were trying to move people through emotions of people.

I do not know whether these emotional ads added much to the sales but these were different from other movies' advertisements and people were noticing them.

And when everything was almost over, the box office, and the CDs and DVDs, the music and the movie, and when the movie was still 'new', the TV started showing advertisement for the 'television premier' of the movie. That is, the movie is gonna hit the idiot boxes this Sunday, which must have provided the producers with a few more crores as a hit movie is being aired so early.

I think the movie generated money in all the ways it could and that too in a short span of time. Probably because the strategists for the movie know that it's not an era of silver jubilee and golden jubilee and planned according to the short lifetime of current movies. I think the movie makers today should try to plan in such a manner that they are able to find maximum profits from all possible sources and for that, Jab We Met can be a great example.

Yet another magic on its way

Yet another retail chain to launch soon. So what's new? This time its going to be somewhat different. This time the stores are going to provide us with material for our cellphones. That is, games, movies, music and other applications. The chain will be called Media Magic, and originates from a Maharashtra based company called Mobile Magic.

The company is planning to open 10,000 retail stores within a span of two years that makes it clear that the company will be targeting people from not just metros or cities but even small towns. Currently the company is considered to have a catalog of 500 movies and 5000 songs.

The company is in an exclusive tie-up with Hungama mobile and movie-giant Shemaroo will also be providing its content to Media Magic customers through a strategic tie-up.