Reliance Entertainment’s ‘Sunflower’ to premiere on ZEE5 on 11 June
On the digital front, Reliance has one film starring Sonakshi Sinha on Netflix, and five more shows spread across Netflix, Amazon and Disney+ Hotstar. TV shows include two in Telugu, three in Punjabi and one in Bhojpuri besides animated adaptations of their popular IPs including Little Singham and Smashing Simmba.
Its upcoming movie slate includes Rohit Shetty’s Cirkus starring Ranveer Singh, four titles in collaboration with filmmaker Neeraj Pandey including one featuring Ajay Devgn on the life of Chanakya, three with Imtiaz Ali, a remake of Tamil action thriller Kaithi starring Devgn, a satire with Pankaj Tripathi and two films starring Parineeti Chopra and Saif Ali Khan respectively.
“As an organisation, we now create content for everything from a mobile screen to a cinema screen," group chief executive officer Shibasish Sarkar had said in an earlier interview to Mint, adding that working capital generally follows salience of the business, and while non-film businesses are largely funded by the platforms such as OTT (over-the-top) video firms, the feature film investment comes from Reliance itself.
Directed by Vikas Bahl, the Sunflower stars actor-comedian Sunil Grover in the lead role, along with Ranvir Shorey, Girish Kulkarni, Shonali Nagrani, Sonal Jha and Ashish Vidyarthi.
In the earlier interview, the media and entertainment company had said its streaming, television and animation content is making up 40% of its business currently as compared to 5% two years ago when film ventures were its mainstay as the firm learns to create programming for a mobile-first country. Despite the recent financial troubles of parent group headed by Anil Ambani, the production house is not just de-risking its business by diversifying interests but beginning to cater to new media audiences watching web content via streaming platforms.
