Mumbai–Hindi film industry veteran Tanuj Garg and ace photographer-producer Atul Kasbekar have announced their partnership to set up a new-age, high content film company Ellipsis Entertainment.
The partnership includes Shanti Sivaram Maini, Swati Iyer Chawla and Piya Sawhney, who along with Kasbekar produced the Sonam Kapoor-starrer “Neerja”.
Incorporated earlier this year, Ellipsis is looking at charting an aggressive growth path. The extensive experience, market standing and goodwill of its promoters has already ensured eight Hindi movie projects in different stages of development and casting.
Currently, three of them, developed ground-up, will go on the floors in the financial year 2017-2018. The projects will be helmed by a mix of emerging and renowned directors.
The promoters’ driving philosophy is a budget-conscious, content-based movie, which they believe is the sole determinant of box office success.
The creative think-tank extends beyond in-house expertise to creative alliances with emerging and established filmmakers.
About the new venture, Garg, former CEO of Balaji Motion Pictures, said in a statement: “Having derived a holistic 360-degree understanding of the business through my tenure with leading companies from their inception, it was time to leverage the experience, relationships and goodwill built over 15 years and turn entrepreneurial.”
He said that he and Kasbekar have known each other for long.
“Our objective of coming together is to create pedigreed cinema, which we can be proud of and create value for all stakeholders. Along with our partners, Shanti, Swati and Piya, we are actively building a multi-genre movie slate and are pleased with the progress so far.”
Kasbekar added that Ellipsis’ philosophy is to spot, nurture, mentor and back progressive, engaging, compelling and marketable content.
“It is an exciting time of content flux in the industry. Marrying a good story with sensible economics in order to yield a strong ROI is the only way forward. Tightened budgets, use of best practices, rebates, brand partnerships and viably structured deals with talent, are some of the mechanisms to rationalise costs and de-risk the business.”