News is abuzz all around that there are going to be more and more Hollywood-Bollywood co-productions and cooperation to cash in on the increasing appeal of Bollywood in the overseas markets and as the Hollywood powerhouses of movie business faces less of box office success, maybe as an aftershock of the Great American financial fiasco after the great depression of the 30s.
Today’s most popular story for film buffs in the news is about Anil Ambani’s RBE (Reliance Big Entertainment) getting into a joint venture with Julia Roberts’ production house Red Om Films and director Brett Ratner’s Rat Entertainment. Ratner has directed films like Red Dragon (2002), X-Men: The Last Stand (2002), Rush Hour 2 (2000) and Rush Hour 3 (2007). Julia Roberts recently visited India, and the photo above is a picture of her in front of the Taj Mahal.
Anil Ambani’s RBE has earlier established creative partnerships with Hollywood bigwigs like Nicolas Cage’s Saturn Productions, Jim Carrey’s JC3 Entertainment and George Clooney’s Smokehouse Productions.
Recently Warner Bros. Pictures' first Bollywood film, also the first Bollywood film to be shot in China, Chandni Chowk to China, directed by Nikhil Advani and starring Akshay Kumar and Deepika Padukone (in lead double roles - a Chinese woman and an Indian woman) written by Sridhar Raghavan was released.
The film, 50% of which was based on the real life story of Akshay Kumar who worked as a cook in Bangkok before making it big in Bollywood, had all the box office masala ingredients like the hutongs of Beijing, the electric energy of Shanghai, breathtaking Chinese landscapes and the crazy world of megalomaniac villains, femme fatales, crazy inventors, Chinese mysticism and outlandish kung-fu assassins. Still it could not please the Box Office Gods, may be because it lacked the gripping human story of Slumdog Millionaire, or the technical, dictatorial and all other film-making brilliance associated with Slumdog Millionaire.
It is rumored that more and more Holly-Bolly ventures are on the pipeline, as film production and shooting in India are much cheaper and India has a huge wealth of untapped talent of actors, technicians and others, apart from the fact that India is a big market for movies and other entertainment-related products. It is noteworthy that even Britney Spears had Bollywood style choreography for one of her songs scheduled for her latest concert tour.
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