Twentieth Century Fox launches Bollywood venture

Twentieth Century Fox today announced it has set up a new Asian studio in an attempt to tap into the lucrative Bollywood film market. The studio is a joint venture between the film giant and the Asian satellite broadcaster Star, which are both owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Fox Star Studios will produce Asian-language films for worldwide distribution. It will start out making Bollywood films in India, with plans to expand to China and south-east Asia. Twentieth Century Fox is not the first studio to try to capitalise on the success of the Indian film industry outside its home market. In 2007, Sony Pictures Entertainment produced its own Bollywood musical, Saawariya. Sony-owned Columbia Pictures Film Production Asia invested in Ang Lee's Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which was released in 2000, while Warner Bros Pictures set up a joint venture with China's state-run China Film Group and Hengdian Group in 2004, and has invested in Hindi films. The Walt Disney Company last year released a Chinese-language children's movie that mixed live action and computer animation. It has also teamed up with Indian studio Yash Raj Films to make computer-animated movies.