Paramount Films may become part of Viacom 18 Media

Viacom 18 Media, an equal joint venture (JV) between Network 18 and Viacom, will take over the Indian operations of Paramount Pictures.

Paramount is an arm of media conglomerate Viacom, but operates independently in India as Paramount Films of India Ltd. The Hollywood major has blockbusters like Mission Impossible and Transformer series to its credit.

“Now, Paramount Films will be part of Viacom 18,” said two people familiar with the development.

According to industry officials, all movies released under the Paramount banner in India will be distributed, marketed and syndicated by Viacom 18 Motion Pictures. A spokesperson at Viacom 18 Motion Pictures declined to comment.

Last year, Viacom 18 decided to reboot its film business, Studio18, and rebrand it as Viacom18 Motion Pictures.

It plans to invest around Rs 250 crore in producing films over the next three years. It has began beefing up its in-house marketing function, and is also looking at creating a talented pool of newcomers to ideate for concept development, production, merchandising and syndication. Studio 18’s business was based on acquisition of films and trading.

Viacom 18 also operates Hindi general entertainment channel Colors, music channel MTV India, kids channel Nickelodeon India and lifestyle channel VH1.

“Realigning with Viacom 18 will help it (Paramount) to leverage the existing infrastructure and also help in increasing its investments in the country for distribution, merchandising and production,” said an industry official.

In India, Paramount has a quasi-fixed distribution strategy, where key markets like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore are managed by itself, while other markets are managed by Mukta Arts and Shringar films.

Unlike Paramount, other Hollywood studios like Fox, Warner and Walt Disney have been aggressively ramping up their distribution, marketing and co-production deals with Indian film production houses.

“Hollywood, which had a mere three to five per cent market share few years back, has now realised the potential of the Indian market. The market is growing 25 per cent year-on-year. While this was so far metro-centric phenomenon, the dubbed versions in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi have also fetched good Box Office collections,” said Timmy S Kandhari, leader – entertainment & media practice, PricewaterhouseCoopers.

For instance, Warner Bros’ Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince was released in India with 353 prints in 2009, while Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows hit the screens here with over 500 prints last December.