MUMBAI: Reliance MediaWorks has entered into a strategic business alliance with UFO Moviez, to establish a gateway for digital film releases on the big screen in India.
Under this alliance, UFO Moviez would set up an additional encoding and encryption facility at Reliance MediaWorks’ premises and business engagements with the producers and distributors for this facility would be undertaken by Reliance MediaWorks. The company is looking at undertaking around 15 movie digitization projects on a weekly basis. The primary benefit of this will be to ensure a more controlled environment for conversion of movies to the digital platform in a standardized manner for uniform quality and security.
The alliance will help create a platform that would enable the producers and distributors to start utilizing more number of digital screens to ensure a wider release, consistency in quality and curb piracy. Also, it would simultaneously ensure that the exhibitors can enhance their theatrical revenues as they can have hassle-free, timely release and greater availability of movies without issues of print quality or delivery dates.
Reliance MediaWorks also operates BIG Cinemas with over 250 screens in India spread across 78 cities in the country. This will enable the company to provide movie programming services for 1,800 cinemas in India equipped with UFO’s advanced digital technology. Under this arrangement, UFO would recommend Reliance MediaWorks’ offer for programming services to these cinemas across India. Reliance MediaWorks also plans to increase the number of digital screens across its cinemas in India using UFO technology.
"Reliance MediaWorks and UFO Moviez have each led fundamental transformations in their own market, significantly impacting the Indian Film Industry. By combining our unique strengths, Reliance MediaWorks and UFO Moviez will accelerate the creation of a secure digital ecosystem that facilitates a wider reach for digital distribution of movies, delivering to movie consumers a superior experience, more content, with greater reliability and lower costs. That’s where we can make a real difference," said Reliance MediaWorks CEO Anil Arjun.
UFO Moviez India joint managing director Kapil Agarwal added, "We are very excited about this strategic business alliance with Reliance MediaWorks. The alliance would help us focus on our core business of technology development and greater proliferation of digital systems across cinemas, while creating a significant platform for producers and distributors to optimize their print costs and spend more on marketing and publicity within the overall release cost, resulting into accelerating of the recovery process."
