Reliance Big Entertainment's Twenty Film Projects Approved

[savramesh 37]

Business Standard

Friday, May 15, 2009

From the time Reliance Big Entertainment announced its creative partnership at the Cannes Film Festival last year, more than 20 individual film projects of the company have been approved.

Seven deals with Nicholas Cage’s Saturn Films, Jim Carrey’s JC 23 Entertainment, George Clooney’s Smokehouse Productions, Chris Columbus’ 1492 Pictures, Tom Hanks’ Playtone Productions, Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment and Jay Roach’s Everyman Pictures were announced last year itself. These were followed by deals with Julia Roberts’ Red Om Films and Brett Ratner’s Rat Entertainment.

While Cage’s Saturn Films’ ‘Voodoo Child’, written by John Collee, is under development, Carrey’s JC 23 Entertainment will roll out ‘O’Gunn’ with writers Ed Cannistraci and Fred Seton.

Reliance will also be providing seed money to Columbus’ 1492 Pictures for three films, namely ‘Things They Left Behind’, based on Stephen King’s short story about 9/11 survivors, an adaptation of Thurston Clarke’s book ‘The Last Campaign’ and David Dorfman’s script ‘It’s A Miserable Life’.

On the other hand, Ratner’s Rat Entertainment will develop ‘Youngblood’, based on Rob Liefeld’s graphic novel ‘Infinity’ with writer John Collee and John Delorean’s project with James Toback.

Roberts’ Red Om Films will develop Dan Eldon’s project. So far, according to sources, nearly $10-12 million have been spent over the making of these 20 scripts.

Reliance BIG Entertainment chairman Amit Khanna said, “It has been a very active and satisfactory first year and we have been delighted by the quality of the individual projects being presented to us for development financing. There are many others in the evaluation/negotiation stages and I’m confident of moving into the film-making stage on several projects before the end of the year”.

“These creative partnerships call for Reliance to co-finance production at the US Studio, where existing first-look deals are in place. From the conversations to date, we know that the respective studios welcome our development silos and our subsequent co-financing ability. We have broken completely new ground by empowering some of the best talent in Hollywood,” he said.