HINDU FILMMAKER REACHES AGREEMENT WITH MUSLIM PROTESTERS

Ending a row between Indian Hindu filmmakers and Muslim protesters, director Kamal Hassan said today (Saturday) that he has agreed to mute the audio in several scenes of his spy thriller Vishwaroopam that the protesters had deemed offensive. Following a five-hour mediation conference overseen by Home Secretary R. Rajagopal of the state government of Tamil […]

POPCHIPS YANKS KUTCHER AD

Popchips has yanked an online ad featuring Ashton Kutcher dressed like a Bollywood actor in brown makeup after receiving complaints that the ad is racist. It received the back-of-the-hand from Anil Dash, a veteran technology consultant and blogger, who wrote that the ad “revealed a much larger, more complex problem with [Popchips] and with the […]

BOLLYWOOD FORCES ALLEGED PIRATE SITES TO SHUT DOWN

Users in India of some of the leading file-hosting sites found those sites replaced by the following announcement on Wednesday: “This site has been blocked as per instructions from Department of Telecom (DOT). As reported by TorrentFreak.com, such sites as RapidShare, MegaUpload, MediaFire, and HotFile have been blocked. India produces the largest number of movies […]

BOLLYWOOD PRODUCERS HIRING WESTERNERS

As Indian films garner a wider audience abroad, Bollywood studios are increasingly including roles for Western actors in their productions, Agence France Presse, the French news agency, reported over the weekend. Alexx O’Nell, a 30-year-old native of Connecticut who came to Mumbai, the country’s film capital, when his U.S. marketing firm transferred him there, said […]

HOLLYWOOD AND BOLLYWOOD COME TOGETHER

In a pact aimed at strengthening the ties between Hollywood and Bollywood, the world’s two leading motion picture production centers, the Motion Picture Association of America and representatives of the Indian film industry have agreed to work together to develop co-productions and battle piracy. At a ceremony at Paramount studios on Wednesday local officials and […]

ARS GRATIA ARGENTUM?

The seemingly all-but-settled negotiations between MGM’s creditors and Spyglass Entertainment have been thrown into confusion following word that an Indian conglomerate, Sahara India Pariwar, had offered $2 billion to buy the company’s $3.7-billion debt and convert it to equity. The London Financial Times commented that the move “would deepen ties between Bollywood and Hollywood.” But […]

PAKISTAN SHUTS DOWN BOLLYWOOD COMEDY

Pakistan film censors on Wednesday halted Friday’s scheduled release of a Bollywood movie starring one of Pakistan’s biggest pop stars, Ali Zafar. Zafar, making his film debut, stars in the comedy Tere Bin Ladin as a Pakistani reporter who hopes to get a visa to the U.S. by finding a bin Ladin look-alike and interviewing […]