Paramount invites Cruise, Kidman & Spielberg to town

Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman and Steven Spielberg are coming to town next month.

The Cruise-Spielberg film ‘War of the Worlds’ will be the first of the block, releasing on July 1, while political thriller ‘Interpreter’, starring Nicole Kidman, will debut towards the fag end of July.

‘War of the Worlds’, the sci-fi thriller, is being distributed by Paramount Films of India. The movie is based on H.G. Wells’ 19th century classic of the same name, which deals with an alien invasion.

The Hollywood studio, predictably, has an elaborate marketing programme around the launch, including a multi-city premiere, an ad campaign spanning print, outdoor and TV, promotions on the Internet (via hungama.com), radio (GO 92.5 FM in Mumbai, Radio Mirchi in Delhi) as well as exclusive programmes as well as a contest on MTV.

Unlike ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Batman Begins’, which had kids/youth brands such as Kellogg’s (Star Wars) and Mirinda (Batman Begins) riding on them, ‘War of the Worlds’ will have consumer electronics major Hitachi in the forefront.

The tie-up with Hitachi is a global one and in India, the company has a promotional campaign running in different metros.

Paramount will release over 160 prints of the film. The movie, for the record, is being dubbed in Hindi and Tamil.

Apart from ‘War of the Worlds’ and ‘Interpreter’, Paramount has launch plans for 9 other movie titles over the July-December '05 period. The list includes kids’ special ‘Madagascar’ in August, horror movie ‘Land of the Dead’ in September, comedy ‘Just Like Heaven’ in November’ and blockbuster ‘King Kong’ in December.

If the movie slate is hot, Paramount is making sure that the viewership is adequate with an exclusive distribution tie-up with four players, including Shringar Films, PVR Pictures, Eurasia Visuals and Hansa Pictures.

Shringar will cover Maharashtra, Gujarat and Central India; PVR will cover the Delhi and Gurgaon markets; Eurasia will look at Uttar Pradesh; and Hansa will cover the South Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. The studio, incidentally, will continue to distribute its films directly in the metros of Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Secunderabad and Chennai.

“We are looking at consistent, 52-week business from our four associates,” says Kurt Rieder, vice-president, sales & marketing, Asia, United International Pictures, about the agreement.

The tie-up spans 18 months and is based on a revenue-share model. “All costs concerning the release of a film will be taken care by us, but the distributors have the task of pushing our movies, especially in the interiors of the country,” says Sarabjit Singh, general manager, Paramount Films of India. © 2005 agencyfaqs!