PUSAN – Fox STAR Studios, the newly-created joint venture between two News Corp. divisions, has wasted no time striking its first production deal.
The company, created last month between 20th Century Fox and Asian satcaster STAR, has signed a multi-picture deal with Indian producer of the year Vipul Amrutlal Shah.
"Deal includes the development and production of a visual effects-driven fantasy action movie and a contemporary romantic comedy, as well as a first look deal on Shah’s future projects," company said in a statement. The untitled effects film will be "supported by a team of top visual effects directors from Hollywood and supervised by Fox’s multiple award-winning in-house visual effects team."
"This is a co-production deal," Fox STAR Studios India CEO Vijay Singh told Variety. "Normally Indian studios walk in when a film is finished and even then may not have seen the movie. We want a traditional (Hollywood studio) model, a production and development deal with some of the usual disciplines such as script development."
The deal requires Fox STAR Studios to fully finance the pics and gives it outright ownership of the intellectual property. Significantly it gives film-makers a chance to share in the upside.
"We are committed to building relationships in Bollywood with like minded producers and we hope to add value to the creative production process – by bringing the latest VFX and animation technology to Bollywood productions," Sanford Panitch, prexy of Fox International Productions, said.
"Fox STAR Studios is very clear that it wants to make films with an Indian sensibility and for the Indian market," Shah said. "But even if it takes ten years, sooner of later everyone is going to have to get used to working this way. So I might as well do it now."
"It is our plan to replicate the studio model in distribution too. We have created a national distribution network, because we want to control the distribution all the way down to dealing with the multiplexes and single screen theaters. And we are now putting all our Hollywood product through us too," Singh said. Distributors in India traditionally sell off local rights in big cities and regions.
"This means we are a single stop shop for producers to come to covering everything except music rights, and will access the 20th Century Fox int'l network overseas."
"Vipul Shah's talent and demonstrated understanding of Indian audiences, together with our Studio’s marketing and financial expertise, will provide audiences of Indian cinema with films that will set new benchmarks in India and around the world," Jim Gianopulos, chairman and CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment, said.
Shah's recent track record includes "Namastey London" and "Singh is Kinng," which was released in August and enjoyed a record breaking opening weekend B.O. of $16.1 million and now reaching a cume of $38 million.
He is now on location in the U.K. as producer and helmer of "London Dreams" one of three other pics that will be offered to the studio under the first look deal.
Fox STAR Studios was set up as a pan-Asian initiative in the region covered by STAR's footprint and is expected over time to put together three production and distribution slates, one each in India, Greater China and South East Asia (Variety, Sept 9, 2008.) The Indian operation is significantly the most advanced.
© Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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