Mumbai: Viacom18 is gearing up to foray into Hindi movie genre with launch of a new Hindi Movie channel under the franchise of its secondary GEC brand Rishtey.
Viacom18 shelved its plan of entering Movies segment couple of years before citing very high cost of movies acquisition. However, the company under new ownership is looking bullish on venturing in to movies genre.
Commenting on the launch, Viacom18 Group CEO Sudhanshu Vats said, “With the launch of Rishtey Cineplex, we are entering the large Hindi movie genre, thereby filling a pivotal whitespace and offering a holistic Hindi entertainment ecosystem from our stable. At Viacom18 we are committed to continuously strengthening our portfolio across genres, languages and age groups. Rishtey Cineplex is a key milestone in that journey.”
The 50:50 joint venture between US broadcasting major Viacom Inc and Reliance Industries-controlled Network 18 Group will launch Hindi movie channel Rishtey CINEPLEX in the first quarter of the next financial year, added Sudhanshu Vats.
Also, over the years, we have acquired a good number of titles for our Hindi channels Colors and Rishtey. More importantly, there is also a growing demand for dubbed films, which changes the commercial dynamics for a movie channel, Moreover “Rishtey Cineplex will also enable us to offer 360-degree value to our advertisers creating more opportunities for on-air promotions enabling optimisation of ad inventory across the network, ” he said.
The channel will be headed by Raj Nayak, who is also chief executive of Hindi channels Colors and Rishtey.
Colors & Rishtey CEO Raj Nayak said, “We have scripted a great success story for brand Colors with it being extended into regional languages and English entertainment. Each of these channels has helped us cater to an intrinsic viewer demand. We are now all set to give impetus to brand Rishtey with the launch of our exclusive Hindi movies channel Rishtey Cineplex, which will help us fortify our Hindi entertainment portfolio. With the best in films and entertainment lined up, we are confident that we will be able to strengthen audience affinity with Rishtey Cineplex.”
With this Viacom18 fills the gap and gets in to garner their share of eyeballs from existing players like Star India, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd and Sony Pictures Networks India.
