Amritraj hopes TV show is 'Gateway'

Reality show tries to showcase Asia's talent

By PATRICK FRATER

HONG KONG -- Ashok Amritraj has his own moviemaking reality TV show, "Gateway," that preemed last week on Sony's PIX network in India. But while he is selling Indian youngsters the dream of making it in Hollywood, his ambitions run the other way, too.

The Hyde Park Entertainment topper sees himself as a bridge between the barely connected film industries of Asia and America.

"There is tremendous talent in India and Asia," Amritraj says. "I am uniquely placed to make the connections, having been born in India and worked 26 years in Hollywood."

Having previously made a handful of Indian pics, including early Aishwarya Rai starrer "Jeans," Amritraj is now stepping into Asia with both feet. He is opening an office in Singapore, where there are incentives, economic infrastructure and neutrality. His aim is to operate on a panregional scale stretching from India to Japan. If he pulls it off, he'll be the first to succeed.

Hyde Park Asia is to produce or co-produce six to eight movies per year, consisting of a mixture of English-language titles aimed at a global crossover audience and a slate of local-language titles targeting a national or regional market.

Over the next three months, Amritraj expects to finish setting up the shingle's first trio of local pictures, one each in Japan, South Korea and India.

"These first movies will be the basis of my long-term partnerships in Asia," says Amritraj, who admits he hasn't yet been able to find a good way to do business in China.

While he is playing his cards close to the vest for the moment, Amritraj already has a three-picture deal with Adlabs Films, the movie arm of India's most powerful entertainment conglom, Reliance Entertainment, and a separate deal for animation pictures with Kerala-based Toonz. That is expected to yield "The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus" for Christmas 2009. In Japan, Amritraj had been working with Kadokawa Pictures on "Solitary Isle." While that project has been abandoned, Amritraj says the Kadokawa relationship remains strong.

"We come to these partnerships from a very Asian point of view. We don't see ourselves as a Western partner. We are very aware of what the other party brings to the table," Amritraj says. "And we are not as big as a studio, so we can be more nimble."

That said, Amritraj will call on his Hollywood connections to give the English-language pics and top-end foreign-language films studio-level North American distribution. Local-language titles will be released by partners in their home market, with territories in between sold through Hyde Park Intl.

First three crossover films:

• "Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-li" is based on the Japanese "Street Fighter" vidgame franchise, which starts shooting this month in Hong Kong and Bangkok.

• "The Other End of the Line," a lower-budget pic that recently wrapped, is typical of the kind of crossover pic Amritraj foresees as the company's stock in trade. Featuring an Indian call center operative who travels to the U.S. to meet up with an American guy she has fallen for over the phone, it stars up-and-comer Jesse Metcalfe opposite Shriya Saran, an Indian beauty who worked her way through Indian regional cinema and broke into Bollywood in 2007 after Tamil-language "Sivaji: The Boss." Although much of the lensing took place in San Francisco, the crew throughout was 80% Indian. MGM has domestic rights.

• The third pic, currently in development, is likely to be "Nanda Devi," an action-drama about the CIA and India's joint efforts in the 1960s to put a satellite dish on a holy mountain -- a real event that had repercussions in India, China and the U.S.

"Street Fighter" and "Other End" both involve bank finance from the Asian entertainment unit of Standard Chartered Bank and set Adlabs as a cross-collateralized, co-production partner. MGM has domestic on "Other End" while Capcom and 20th Century Fox are onboard for "Street Fighter."

Hyde Park Asia is also in the process of putting into place "a fairly significant film fund."

Ready financing and strong distribution have given the Weinstein Co. a head start in Asia over other Western players that have sniffed around but not committed themselves wholesale.

If Amritraj and his partners can overcome the region's fragmentation and different approaches to doing business, Hyde Park may become a major East-West conduit. "Gateway," the reality show's title, was not chosen at random.