Anil Ambani to fund Hollywood biggies

CANNES: Bollywood has always gone places. Now it’s going to the very fount of global entertainment — Hollywood — with big money in tow.
Anil Ambani's Reliance Big Entertainment (RBE) has signed deals to provide development funds to eight leading creative forces in Hollywood. The deals, announced here on Sunday, include those with production houses like Nicolas Cage’s Saturn Productions, Jim Carrey’s JC 23 Entertainment, George Clooney’s Smokehouse Productions, Chris Columbus’s 1492 Pictures, Tom Hanks’s Playtone Productions, Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment and Jay Roach’s Everyman Pictures. ( Watch: Anil Ambani signs Hollywood stars )
In layman’s language, this means that the company will provide for the creation of a development silo for each of the Hollywood A-listers. RBE chairman Amit Khanna said: "This initiative will yield up to 30 scripts in the next two years. We are confident that at least 10 of them will go into production during that period." The movies that will be made could initially amount to $1 billion. "There will be no creative interference," said advertising guru Prasoon Joshi, who is also in on the deal. When creative freedom is combined with the huge cache of funds that Reliance will pump in, Bollywood is set to become a very significant player in the west.