Bigg Boss to expand Southern presence

Bigg Boss, the reality show is all set to expand its Southern presence with Tamil and Telugu variants being launched in the next couple of months.

Endemol India wants to cash in on the success of the show in Kannada. It has been doing good in its Hindi avatar (7 seasons). It will be Tamil in February, followed by Telugu, according to Deepak Dhar, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the company. Bigg Boss has captured the attention of Indian audiences. Unscripted, unpredictable, unadulterated entertainment is what you can expect in the show, he said. “We will tie-up with a TV channel in the respective language like in Kannada we went with ETV,” he told Business Line in a telephonic interview.

The strong and flourishing regional cinema and TV audiences in the Southern states is a compelling case for Endemol to enter the market early. “Our strategy is to get into realty shows, films and TV with partnerships,” he said.

This year, the company, which is among the leading content production firms across TV, film and digital plans to diversify into films and fiction-based TV productions. Its film arm, Eyedentity Motion Pictures is making its southern foray with the bilingual film Anaamika in Telugu and Tamil in collaboration with Viacom 18 Motion Pictures and Moving Pictures.

By the end of February, the film in Telugu directed by well-known filmmaker Sekhar Kammula and Nayantara in the lead female role and music by Keeravani will be out in theatres.

The company entered into the movie making business with the remake of blockbuster Kahaani in Tamil and Telugu and Hindi version of the Malayalam hit film Traffic , he said.

The company is also working hard in bringing big names like Amitabh Bachahan to TV audiences with a fiction series later this year.

Directed by Anurag Kashyap it will be based on an original script of Endemol, he said.

Source: http://cablequest.org/news/programme-news/item/4196-bigg-boss-to-expand-southern-presence.html