Holly-Bolly Films Produced in India To Compete with Hollywood on Global Basis

Toronto and Los Angeles based veteran adman and film producer, Andy Halmay, president of Veni Vici Entertainment Inc., has set meetings with leading Indian film producers and distributors in Mumbai and Hyderabad for the weeks of July 24th and August 1st to discuss co-production and distribution on several feature films which he categorizes as “Holly-Bolly” films, to be produced in India for global distribution.

Multi-award winning Halmay waxes enthusiastically on the subject. “Holly-Bolly” films, he explains, “are films with maximum crossover potential that can be equally enjoyed by Indian as well as Western audiences, each from their own point of view.”

As an example he points to “Bend It Like Beckham” a film made in Britain about a young girl in an expatriate Sikh family in London. This film did equally well around the world and even made David Beckham, the British football player, better known among Americans who had never heard of him before.

Halmay notes that “Bend It Like Beckham” missed one important item in his criteria for a ”Holly-Bolly” film. It wasn’t produced in India.

Halmay’s criteria for a “Holly-Bolly” film calls for 1. a story that involves characters of both Indian and Western cultures, 2. action that plays out in India and in the Western world, 3. a cast of Indians and Westerners, 4. an end result that can be enjoyed from the points of view of Indian and Western cultures, and, most important, 5. a film that is totally or substantially produced in India where dramatic production economies can be realized.

Holly-Bolly films, in Halmay’s estimation, should lead to Bollywood exports not only to the expatriate communities of Indians but to general audiences of the entire world.

The first five films on Halmay’s drawing board include, “THE HORROR OF SURPANAKA,” a thriller with much music involving a resurrection of the 5,000 year old Indian mythological demon Surphanaka; “DANGEROUS DAYS FOR DRAGON DANCER VIGILANTES,” a modified Kung Fu film which will feature wire work in martial arts as well as in ballroom dancing, plus a modern version of India’s ancient martial art, Kalaripayattu.

A more ambitious film that will be partially produced in America, titled “BEATS VIAGRA,” is a comedy about the oddest couple, a hustling American product placement agent and a sedate Indian professor of philosophy in which foolish aspects of American and Indian cultures are examined. This one will feature a major Hollywood name.

“GOOD GUYS, INTERNATIONAL,” is a youthful action-adventure that may become a franchise and a multi-national co-production, involving a number of young, male and female action heroes from various countries. They form a counterpart to Interpol.

The fifth film, an animated family feature, titled, “THE MAGIC BRUSH,” involves a Chinese Forrest Gump who runs away from home in the 1800s in search of the magic brush and manages to be on hand when many of the world’s major historical characters are born; Sun Yat Sen, Gandhi, Churchill, Harry Truman, FDR, Hitler, etc. He gets tips in art from some of the French Impressionists and Picasso.

Contact: Sue Morgan - 416-925-1271
suemorgangvtc@yahoo.ca