Mumbai: Leading Indian studio Eros International’s Trinity Pictures, which was set up as India’s first and only franchise feature studio in February 2015, is now ready with its first slate of films across new and exciting genres.
In what is said to change the way films are traditionally developed, Trinity’s first slate is all about creating character-driven franchises which will be leveraged across feature films, merchandising, digital and more. With a focus on creating fresh concepts in new spaces, Trinity is also the first Bollywood studio in India that has a dedicated in-house team of writers in the ‘Trinity Writers’ Room’ who have created over ten original franchises since the Division’s inception, out of which at least four films will go into production in fiscal year 2017.
Trinity’s initial lineup includes a range of character-driven franchises across budgets, genres and languages – from a live action elephant film, to a kid’s action film and an Indo-China project to name a few. These will be helmed by acclaimed directors from across the country including Kabir Khan, Siddharth Anand, Amole Gupte, Telugu director Krish and popular Tamil director Prabhu Solomon.
The first feature to roll out under Trinity Pictures will be director Amole Gupte’ s favorite genre but with a difference – a kids action film, a big scale action film with a child secret agent at the centre of the story that will go on floor in the summer vacation.
With Trinity’s launch, the studio is looking at expanding new film markets which includes opening of one of the biggest markets in the world – China. Two projects will be co-produced with a leading Chinese studio, based on stories organically weaving the socio-cultural worlds of India and China. Additionally, the films will be shot in both languages. The first Indo-China co-production to roll will be directed by Kabir Khan with A-lister cast from India and China — a human drama exploring the central character’s journey from India to China.
Other projects in the pipe line include a film by Siddharth Anand which will explore a fresh take on the spy genre in India. This genre is a global favourite with franchise potential.
Multiple award winning Tamil director, Prabhu Solomon’s bilingual project will be an inspiration from the quintessential super hit animal film—Haathi Mere Saathi. The shooting will take place during the monsoons across India and abroad and will be mounted on a scale with never-seen-before visual effects in this genre.
Ace director Krish’s buddy cop film will be shot in Hindi and Tamil simultaneously, featuring popular lead actors from both the South and Bollywood. This film has been co-written by Shridhar Raghavan (mentor to Trinity writers), Dheeraj Rattan and K. Subhash.
Commenting on Trinity plans, Jyoti Deshpande, Group CEO, Eros International said, “With Trinity, we continue our endeavor to raise the bar in revolutionizing Indian cinema. As a leading film studio, we have peaked with three out of the top four and seven out of top fifteen films in Bollywood in 2015 being Eros films. Trinity strategy is all about conceiving breakthrough big content ideas and unlocking value from that intellectual property across various distribution platforms for a very long time. We are excited about the slate under development and hope we will have a few top ten films from Trinity”.
Ajit Thakur, CEO, Trinity Pictures added, “With Trinity, there is an effort to create something absolutely new for the Indian market, an effort in investing in creating characters that open a world of possibilities – films, digital games, comics, merchandise. We have writers for the first time creating characters first and then building scripts and projects around these characters. We are the first studio to have tied up with China for co-productions and will be creating new markets with films shot in multiple languages. There are many firsts to Trinity and only Eros could have seen the merit in a franchise set up as this and taken the risk of making Trinity Pictures happen. We are very excited that the characters and franchises we are creating will hopefully entertain Indian audiences across platforms and well beyond the first Friday”.
