Popcorn to diversify in project designing
By Manisha Deshpande
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 With a majority of films taking a beating at the box-office, production and distribution houses are looking at various options to minimize the risk factor in production. While Zee recently announced its decision to defer its distribution plans indefinitely, Popcorn Entertainment has decided to diversify into project designing as an extension of its expertise in production. "It is a creative diversification where we will design and complete entire films for established production houses, who are ready to invest in them and can be rest assured that they will be completed from start to finish. The idea of going for this diversification was to cut short the risk factor of losses involved in filmmaking. We definitely can’t end up producing films round the clock and incurring losses considering the fact that almost every second film irrespective of its cast, is taking a beating at the box-office," says Pravesh Sippy, Creative head, Production, Popcorn Entertainment.
Sippy adds that the new change of focus will make Popcorn a service oriented company that will hire the best of talent and expertise to execute projects. "We will handle anything from co-ordination to line production and whatever it takes to make a good project. But we will not be investing money in any of them," he says.
In keeping with the new action plan, Popcorn has already gone ahead and readied 5-6 projects, one of them being for European producers, who will be shooting the entire film on Indian locations. "We will also be confirming the Indian locations for this particular film while there are a couple of projects for UK based producers, details of which we would not like to divulge at this stage," Sippy reveals.
 However, Sippy clarifies that the company will complete its existing co-productions and continue to co-produce a film once in every two-three years. It may be recalled that Popcorn has tied up with Shree Ashavinayak for a film starring Ajay Devgan which will commence shooting later this year.
According to Sippy, Popcorn is also considering expanding its base on other fronts, one of them being the concept of Bollywood tourism, which has picked up full-scale ever since it was initiated in association with Travel Mart India. "It is time to change gears and keep upgrading in order to keep up with the changing pace of business," smiles Pravesh.
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