Bigflix's to beef up movie library size

With the number of registered users on its website touching around one million, the internet connectivity increasing in tier-two cities in the country and the subscriber numbers going up, Big Flicks Pvt. Ltd. is planning to increase the number of movie titles in its library by 1,000 to 3,000 this year, said a senior official.

"We see there is good acceptance of the product as lot of people want movie online, which is convenient and advertisement free. Lot of consumption happens on handheld devices like tablets, smart phones and others. We will also come out with new entertainment and subscription packages," Shreyash Sigtia, business head, told IANS over phone from Mumbai.

According to him, the company offering movie-on-demand service adds around 100 movie titles per month and by the end of this year the total number of movie titles across English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam and others will be around 3,000.

Sigtia said with the internet connectivity improving in tier-two cities, a sizeable number of people from these cities are our subscribers.

He said the company will be adding the best of Tamil titles across genres like action, comedy, drama and thriller classics and recent movies on www.bigflix.com.

Titles from the glorious 1990s era of the southern film industry, like Mani Ratnam's comedy thriller "Thiruda Thiruda", political drama "Iruvar" and Manisha Koirala starrer "Bombay", along with Kamal Hassan starrer "Indian" and Aishwarya Rai's superhit "Jeans" will offer complete entertainment on a single destination.

"Leveraging the popularity of regional content on BIGFLIX, we decided to strengthen our regional catalogue and offer the best of Tamil titles to our huge subscriber base. The Telugu and the Malayalam catalogues on BIGFLIX have received a tremendous response," Sigtia said.

Alhtough TV channels beam new and old movies several times over, direct-to-home (DTH) players offer movies-on-demand and YouYube and other websites offer free movies, Sigita feels online platform has its own advantages.

"Convenience is one factor that the internet offers, which television or DTH players do not offer. In the case of YouYube, one has to search for a movie. Whereas on our platform a subscriber can watch a movie anytime he wants," Sigita said.

With movie piracy becoming rampant eating into their revenues, movie producers are now open to offer Internet rights a bit earlier.