MUMBAI: Online is the way to go! While many Indian film producers have realised the potential of additional revenues from online streaming of films, now the Big Daddy of Bollywood - Yash Raj Films - is going the same way. US based TinselVision, a Tinsel Cinema broadband Internet, video-on-demand (VoD) service targeting South Asian communities in the US, UK and Canada, has inked a deal with Yash Raj Films to showcase the latter’s films on its website (www.tinselvision.com).

This will be the first time that Yash Raj Films will be syndicating its movies to a website. While companies like UTV Motion Pictures and Pritish Nandy Communications amongst others provide their movies for online downloads and streaming to Rajshri.com and BigFlicks.com, Yash Raj Films has until now refrained from joining the bandwagon. However, it does provide paid downloads of its films' songs on its website - www.yashrajfilms.com but their movies have not been made available for download on it as yet.

According to sources close to the development, the deal between TinselVision and Yash Raj Films is likely to be announced sometime in early October and Yash Raj will provide its past and present catalogue of movies to TinselVision. The revenue that comes from the movie downloads will be shared by the two companies. However the time frame of the deal and the number of films included in it could not be ascertained at the time of filing this story.

When queried about the same, TinselVision chairman and CEO Chase Weir was tightlipped on the development. “Within a week’s time you will hear about a film producer that we have tied up with that will clearly put us in a different league. I am not at liberty to take names at this point in time but the very fact that the film producer has come on board with us even before we have launched our service goes to say a lot about our credibility. We are in talks with a lot of big players in the industry for content and the necessary announcements will be made at the right time. We expect every significant content provider to be on board with us,” Weir told Businessofcinema.com without divulging the name of the player.

TinselVision recently also inked a content licensing and online distribution deal with Star India to deliver Star’s television...

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