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Warner Bros starts its Bollywood act

Bipin Chandran in New Delhi

Bollywood is drawing the attention of Hollywood producers. Warner Bros, the world's leading movie production, distribution, licensing and marketing arm of media conglomerate AOL Time Warner, is set to commence film production and film financing operations in India.

The company expects to begin operations by the end of 2002, and the first movie under its banner will be screened in theatres in the first quarter of 2003.

According to a source, the company will soon set up a multi-million dollar corpus for financing movies in India. It is setting its eyes on both big-budget as well as small budget movies.

Warner Bros will be the first multinational company to make a foray into film production and financing in India. So far, the company has been engaged in distribution of Hollywood movies in the country.

The company, according to a senior company executive, will soon seek the necessary regulatory approvals for starting film production and financing operations.

"We are working on the details of the funds that we will require. It would be decided on the number of movies that we fund, and the projects that will come our way. The initial corpus should at least be a multi-million dollar fund," he said, adding that the company wants to be a money making venture by the end of the first year it self.

The company's movie production facility planned in the country would have modern production and post production facilities. "The aim of setting up a production facility is to provide state of the art production facility in the country," he said.

Warner Bros, will, however, be funding both big-ticket and budget movies as well as innovative projects. "We are ready to make big ticket movies like Devdas as well as new age movies like Monsoon Wedding," he said.

The company has also started talks with the leading directors in India, both Hindi movie and some regional language movies, for identifying projects that it would produce in India.

"We are talking to various movie directors to identify projects. We are yet to zero down on our first project. Out target is to complete the production of the first project in the first quarter of 2003," he said.

Warner Bros founded more than 75 years ago as a motion picture studio, has emerged as Hollywood's top-ranked studio in both domestic and international box office gross revenue with $1.2 billion and $1.34 billion respectively.

Warner Bros, in the US produces feature films, television, home video, animation, product and brand licensing, interactive media and international theatres.

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