Reliance, UFO pact for digital film operations in India

Reliance MediaWorks Ltd, the film and entertainment services company from the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, has entered into strategic business alliance with UFO Moviez, the largest chain of satellite-based digital cinemas in the world, to establish the largest gateway for digital film releases in India. 

Reliance MediaWorks operates cinema chain BIG Cinemas, with over 250 screens in India. UFO Moviez has more than 1800 screens across India and beams digitally mastered high quality movie images through satellite directly to cinemas facilitating wide release of any film without any additional cost in prints for content owners. By combining UFO Moviez’s digitisation technology with Reliance MediaWorks’ high-end digital cinema and extensive theatrical programming expertise, the alliance will provide producers and distributors with a larger number of digital screens to ensure a wider release, consistency in quality and reduced piracy. Additionally, this would facilitate timely release of films and greater availability of movies without issues of print quality or delivery dates. 

Under this alliance, UFO Moviez will set up an additional encoding and encryption facility at Reliance MediaWorks’ premises. Reliance MediaWorks will take on business engagements with producers and distributors to use this facility. The company is looking at undertaking around 15 movie digitisation projects on a weekly basis. UFO would recommend Reliance MediaWorks’ offer for programming services to these cinemas across India. Reliance MediaWorks also plans to increase the number of digital screens across its cinemas in India using UFO technology. 

Anil Arjun, CEO of Reliance MediaWorks (pictured), said, “By combining our unique strengths, Reliance MediaWorks and UFO Moviez will accelerate the creation of a secure digital ecosystem that facilitates a wider reach for digital distribution of movies, delivering to movie consumers a superior experience, more content, with greater reliability and lower costs.”

Kapil Agarwal, Joint MD, UFO Moviez India Ltd., added, “The alliance would help us focus on our core business of technology development and greater proliferation of digital systems across cinemas, while creating a significant platform for producers and distributors to optimise their print costs and spend more on marketing and publicity within the overall release cost.”