Stock Taking – Diwali to Diwali

BIG RELIANCE NEWS…

The company that made the biggest news throughout the year was, undoubtedly, Relian­ce’s Big Entertainment! Nothing could be bigger than Reliance’s deal with Spiel­berg’s DreamWorks…. a deal worth $1.5 billion!

So, now, Reliance is tied in with some 30-odd Spielberg movies for the next few years;
Reliance Entertainment picked up a 50% stake in ND Studio for Rs. 150 crore, raising the profile of the studio floated by art director Nitin Desai and getting itself a very high profile as a studio owner; Adlabs launched India’s first multi-sensory cinema in Agra, offering a 6-D cinema experience.

TIME TO PAY

The Bombay high court held producer Rakesh Roshan and his brother, music director Rajesh Roshan, guilty of plagiarism and they had to pay Rs. 2 crore to music director Ram Sampath for using a piece of his music from a Sony Eric­sson television commercial, without permission, in Krazzy 4.

POLITICAL FORAY

Chiranjeevi launched his new political outfit, Praja Rajyam, in Tirupati. Some more film personalities are expected to jump into politics once the polls are officially announced.

OFFERS THAT WEREN’T TAKEN UP

Aamir Khan turned down a film offer of Rs. 20 crore! The Oscar jury turned down India’s official entry, Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Eklavya, from the final five nominated films.

HITCHED UP

Sanjay Dutt with Manyata; Priti Jhangiani and Parvin Dabas; Neena Gupta with Vivek Mehra; Bhumika Chawla with Bharat Thakur, a yoga instructor; music director Sidd­harth Sharma and Aparna; Ayaan Ali Khan with Romesh Sharma’s daughter, Neena.

BOGGED DOWN…

Amitabh Bachchan was hospitalised for abdominal infection and discharged after 6 days;
Feroz Khan fell ill in the US; filmmaker Raj Kaushal suffered a heart attack. All are reportedly up and about and quite healthy.

PETITIONS

Sometimes, legal actions were put aside in favour of pleadings and petitions. Not that they always work but here are some of them: IMPPA wrote to the I & B ministry about artistes and film producers being harassed by anybody and everybody on absolutely flimsy grounds. It sought the government’s intervention, which was…naturally… hardly forthcoming! Raj Thackeray and his political party, MNS, started the Maha­rashtra Navnirman Cine Work ers’ Association; the Federa­tion of Western India Cine Em­ployees (FWICE) promptly said that it was not welcome, as it did not want political outfits to fool around with the lives and careers of cine workers; Financier Bharat Shah petitioned IMPPA to help him recover Rs. 25 crore from Ramgopal Varma, claiming that Ramu’s Varma Corpora­tion owed him the amount which he had invested in films like Satya, Mast and Jungle; IMPPA informed that henceforth film copyrights would have to be registered with the Copyright Board in Delhi; IMPPA wrote to the Collector of Stamps that producers make agreements only with the top stars, and for the rest, the services are utilised on the basis of daily wages. It made a strong case against the Collector’s order to producers to produce each and every agreement entered into with anyone during the production of a film.

SUCCESSFUL DELIVERIES!!

Hrithik Roshan’s wife gave birth to their second child, a boy again;Director Farah Khan, wife of Shirish Kunder, delivered trip­lets; Zayed Khan and wife Maleika became parents of a baby boy, named Zidaan; Actor Anoop Soni’s wife delivered a baby girl.

IN THE RING

Chairperson of CBFC, Shar­mila Tagore, wrote a stinker to health minister Anbumani Ramadoss’ sermons to the film industry and stars about smoking and drinking, asking him to look at the larger picture of the health situation in the country.

BID ADIEU

Producers/directors/financiers F.C. Mehra, Shomu Mukerji, Jhamu Sugandh; writer-director Nabendu Ghosh; actors Satyen Kappu, Rajindernath, Manorama, Jayshree Gadkar, Kunal Singh, Gopi, Kalpana Rao, Lakshmipati, Raghuva­ran, Shobhan Babu, Vihang Naik, Chandrakant Gokhale; writers Vijay Tendulkar, Shabd Kumar, Ali Raza, Suraj Sanim; singer Mahendra Kapoor.

Issue dated Oct 26 – Nov 01, 2008
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