With a big ticket Tamil film titled after this game, Sun Pictures, the film production arm of Sun TV Network, is taking a calculated gamble to re-establish itself as a front-runner in releasing big budget movies in the state.
Sun Pictures has taken over the entire rights of Ajit-starrer, Mankatha and is releasing it today (Already released in few countries), to cash in on the long-festival five-day weekend starting with Ramzan. “It is going to be a very very big release in both the domestic and overseas markets. This is also the first film of Ajit, which Sun Pictures will be distributing,” Vijay Kumar, CEO, Sun TV Network Ltd told Financial Chronicle.
This will also be the first time; Sun Pictures is directly releasing a movie, after the AIADMK, under chief minister J Jayalalithaa, came to power in May this year. Soon after, Sun Pictures COO, Hansraj Saxena was arrested and jailed, following a series of police complaints — for cheating and threatening from a few distributors and producers.
Until a tiff in mid-2007 with the then ruling DMK’s first family, Sun TV Network had limited itself to buying satellite rights of Tamil movies. However, starved of fresh content, the leading Tamil television channel was forced to enter film production and distribution business, as a natural extension, soon after and had acquired and released several big budget movies since then.
Sensing a business opportunity, two grandsons of former state chief minister, M Karunanidhi — Udayanidhi Stalin, son of former deputy chief minister, M K Stalin, and Dayanidhi Alagiri, son of Union Minister, M K Alagiri, also forayed into film production under the banners — Red Giant Movies and Cloud Nine Movies, respectively.
Sun Pictures, Red Giant and Cloud Nine were very active over the past couple of years and all big films came into their kitty, independent of each other. With assured supply of big film content, each one of them also held sway over a chain of theatres across the state, which lend credit to a debate over the ruling family’s control over the Tamil film industry.
“With negotiations and settlements resulting in withdrawal of a few complaints, Sun has put in a new team in place to get back into film distribution. It is also a fact that no other film banner in the state has the money power or a 360-degree marketing capability as that of Sun Pictures,” an industry insider said.
Interestingly, Dayanidhi Alagiri’s Cloud Nine is the original producer of Mankatha. However, fearing opposition from theatre owners, who might force their way to off-set part of their losses accrued from Cloud Nine’s earlier movies, Dayanidhi handed over the rights to Sun Pictures.