Indian Media & Entertainment Industry Surpasses Pre-Pandemic Levels to Reach $26 Billion, Report Reveals

Lise Pedersen Moving towards a more equitable and accountable curation in film programming and selection processes, ethical representation in storytelling and the challenges posed by the lack of awareness and accountability was at the heart of a panel discussion at Cannes Docs, the Cannes Film Market event dedicated to documentary film, on May 20. Panelists included Egyptian director and producer Nada Riyadh, British-Chinese writer and director Paul Sng, Brazilian producer Yolanda Maria Barroso and Swedish producer Malin Hüber; it was moderated by the BFI’s Race Equality Lead Rico Johnson-Sinclair. Opening on a positive note, Riyadh said that, “as an Arab woman,” she welcomed the presence in the official selection at Cannes this year of docs by Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania (“Four Daughters,” main competition) and Moroccan filmmaker Asmae El Moudir (“The Mother of All Lies,” Un Certain Regard), even though “in the real world I still get asked whether I do docs or real films,” she added with a smile.

Whether it’s a plate of hearty lamb curry or a scoop of fresh mint ice cream, Indian home cooking is sure to tantalise our taste buds. But while the dishes may be bursting with flavour upon flavour, it turns out that the intricacies of cooking with spice and flavour is easier to create at home than you might think. In her book Chilli and Mint, food writer Torie True is on a mission to help people bring more spice into their life, whether that’s in the form of chutneys, bread or even sweets treats.

Naman Ramachandran Indian auteur Aribam Syam Sharma’s “Ishanou,” which screened at the Un Certain Regard strand at Cannes in 1991 is returning to the Croisette in a restored version. The Manipuri-language film is the only Indian film at the festival’s Cannes Classics section this year. “Ishanou” (“The Chosen One”), follows Tampha, a young woman with a loving husband and a small daughter, who leads a tranquil existence in the Manipur valley and is occupied with the mundane details of life. Suddenly she begins to behave in a strange manner, talking to flowers, becoming afflicted with dizzy spells and wandering out of the house in the dark of the night. The family tries to find a cure for her malady and finally realize that she does not have a sickness, but rather is responding to the call of a deity who has chosen her.

Cannes Film Festival always knows how to make an entrance and, while questions still remain about whether the shaky global theatrical experience and China’s buying power will affect the festival (coupled with issues involving the festival’s online ticketing platform), it wasn’t evident on the red carpet. Cannes Welcomes Johnny DeppThe opening night feature, the Maïwenn-directed “Jeanne du Barry,” a period piece starring Johnny Depp as Louix XV, kicked off the first night of the festival.

For foreign audiences, Indian cinema long has been closely associated with Bollywood — sprawling, colorful spectacles that feature songs and dance routines — and often one of the three Khans (the unrelated trio of Aamir, Salman and Shah Rukh). But there has been a shift across the past year as focus turned from Mumbai, which had suffered a string of misses until Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan took off on a tear early this year, toward Southern India.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent On the heels of his acclaimed stage performance at London’s National Theater for “Phaedra,” Assaad Bouab (“Call My Agent!,” “Bad Sisters”) is set to team with filmmaker Benjamin Ross (“The Frankenstein Chronicles”) and European production banner Asacha Media Group on “Voyager.” “Voyager” will star Bouab as legendary Medieval explorer and philosopher Ibn Battuta who went on pilgrimage to Mecca and ended up travelling for over twenty years and over 76000 miles across Africa, India and Eurasia, more than anyone in pre-modern history.  Battuta logged his experiences of the people, places and cultures he encountered along the way, writing one of the world’s earliest and most famous travelogues, The Rilah, and earning himself legendary status in history. The project is being developed as a series.

Naman Ramachandran Indian multiplex chains PVR and Inox, which merged earlier this year, have launched a combined distribution arm PVR Inox Pictures, formerly PVR Pictures, “to increase investments in content acquisition to streamline high quality content for the Indian market, generate further opportunity for underrepresented storytellers and independent creators, and deliver a robust content slate to the Indian audience.” PVR Inox operates a network of 1689 cinema screens in 361 properties across 115 cities in India and Sri Lanka, and holds 43% share of multiplex screens in India. PVR Inox Pictures is the largest independent distributor of foreign language films and a prominent distributor of Indian films, in India.

Indian exhibitor PVR Inox, recently formed by the merger of the PVR and Inox cinema brands, has launched a new motion pictures arm, PVR Inox Pictures, which will ramp up acquisitions of international content for the India market. 

THEY were the grandest royal dynasty Europe has ever seen. Builders of the fabulous Palace of Versailles, the Bourbon monarchy effectively ended on the guillotine in 1793 when the French revolutionaries put paid to Louis XV1.

The art of beauty! Lupita Nyong’o is using her head as a canvas. 

EXCLUSIVE: Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions has entered into a strategic content partnership with fellow Indian production house, Sikhya Entertainment, founded by Guneet Monga.

Indian films are a box office mainstay and one, Jodi, from Rhythm Boyz Entertainment, hit big this weekend Stateside, grossing $734,000 on just 125 screens. In April, the film set a record as the most viewed Punjabi trailer in 24 hours (over 12 million views on YouTube).

EXCLUSIVE: With the Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike underway, and guilds around the world expressing solidarity, issues surrounding writers and the way they’re compensated have become front and center of a global conversation. 

Naman Ramachandran The next decade will belong to Indian stories, according to Sushant Sreeram, country director of Prime Video India. Sreeram was delivering a keynote at the ongoing FICCI-Frames 2023 convention in Mumbai. “The coming decade belongs to Indian stories, with streaming enabling expansion of linguistic palette and content diversity,” Sreeram said. The executive also highlighted the impact of streaming services on the Indian media and entertainment industry, noting their role in taking Indian stories to a global audience. “By offering convenient and easy access to the finest Indian content, OTT [streaming] players have made Indian entertainment accessible to viewers worldwide,” Sreeram said.

Naman Ramachandran Indian media and entertainment company IN10 Media Network has launched its film division, MovieVerse Studios. The film studio aims to “produce fresh and engaging content in Hindi and regional languages that connect with theatre-going audiences and those on streaming platforms,” the studio said in a statement. The studio has revealed a diverse slate across genres. These include an action survival rescue drama based on a true story in partnership with Bake My Cake Films, helmed by Sandeep Leyzell and Shobhna Yadav, which has hit films like “Batla House,” “Dasvi” and the upcoming “Tehran” to its credit. It will be directed by Umang Vyas (“Ventilator,” “Dear Father”).

Eternals actor Ma Dong-seok (also known as Don Lee) as their profile pictures to get better customer service.Earlier this week, The Guardian reported that several Chinese social media users have started a trend of switching their profile pictures to photos of Korean-American actor Ma Dong-seok, best known for his roles as Gilgamesh in Marvel’s Eternals and Yoon Sang-hwa in Train To Busan.According to users on the recommendation app XiaoHongShu, using Ma in their avatars helped them resolve issues more quickly and got them better online customer service.One user, per The Guardian, claimed that they were ignored by customer service when using the photo of a girl as their profile image.  “After changing to the avatar of Ma Dong-seok, the customer service attitude was much more polite, and they even took the initiative to make up the price difference,” they said.Another user shared that changing her profile picture to a photo of Ma led to her property manager resolving an issue that she had previously raised several times in a matter of minutes.The trend has since spread to Weibo, a social network similar to Twitter, and social messaging app WeChat, which are two of the most widely-used social media platforms in China.

Naman Ramachandran A galaxy of senior Indian content creators shared their insights on burning topics dominating the local landscape. They were speaking at at Indiantelevision.com’s annual industry event, The Content Hub, in Mumbai on Tuesday. At the Content Creation: No More Formulas panel, Shobha Sant, head of content alliances at Jio Studios, broke down the process behind the selection of its 100-title slate. Sant said that the selection was the result of five years of very a definite plan in terms of understanding audience segmentation and what people are watching.

France Télévisions President Delphine Ernotte Cunci has entered the fray over Twitter’s bungled move to label public broadcasters as “government-funded”, warning that the incident has wider and longer-term implications for news and information.

Naman Ramachandran The south Indian media and entertainment industry grew 33% in 2022 to record revenues of $3.57 billion in 2022, a new report has revealed. The report, titled South India: Setting Benchmarks for the Nation in Media & Entertainment, was prepared by Team MCube Insights for the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), southern region, and was released during the recently-concluded Dakshin conference. It covers in detail the region’s key sectors – film, television, streaming/digital, radio and print – across the four language vectors of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam spread across the states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala and union territory Puducherry.

Twitter has removed labels denoting “Government-Funded Media” for news outlets NPR, PBS, the BBC and others after criticisms from the organizations that the label is not and accurate representations of their editorial independence.