Hindi
Indian Film Company keeps slate busy for 2009-10
MUMBAI: Readying an investment of Rs 1.61 billion ($32.12 million), the Raghav Bahl-driven Indian Film Company (IFC) is lining up a busy 2009-10 schedule.
Apart from the Bollywood crop, IFC’s pipeline includes remake of the Hollywood film “Italian Job” from Paramount Studios. Having acquired the rights, the film is currently in its scripting stage.
IFC has acquired the rights for Shortkut – The Con Is On and Luck that are expected to hit the theatres this July and September.
The AIM-listed company is also co-producing Loot, Striker, King Kaun, Kaun Bola, Life Partner, Road Movie, Paanch Pandav, It‘s A Wonderful Afterlife, Banda Yeh Bindass Hai and Tamil Unlimited.
Director by Neeraj Vohra, Shortkut – The Con is On will release in July and casts Akshaye Khanna, Arshad Warsi and Amrita Rao. Directed by Soham Shah, Luck, meanwhile, is scheduled for an August release and casts Sanjay Dutt, Imran Khan and Danny Denzongpa.
Life Partner will release in September this year. Both Kaun Bola and Banda Yeh Bindaas Hai will open in theatres in November.
Loot and Striker are scheduled for a March 2010 release. Also in the pipeline are 7 Days in Paris, a romantic comedy directed by Sanjay Ghadvi that casts Imran Khan and Katrina Kaif as lead protagonists. The film is expected to release in April 2010.
It‘s A Wonderful Afterlife, a co-production with director Gurinder Chadha, casts Shabana Azmi, Sendhil Ramamurthy (of Heroes fame) Shaheen Khan (Bend It Like Beckham) and British-Indian theatre actress Goldie Notay. The film is expected to hit the theatres in April 2010.
The other productions are Game, Ishq Unplugged, Fruit ‘N‘ Nut and Bombay Velvet.
Additionally, there are untitled projects with directors such as David Dhawan, Anees Bazmee, Sabal S Shekhawat, Shoham Shah, Amrit Sagar and Priyadarshan.
“We will continue to focus on distribution and exploitation of quality content that entertains audiences and gives commercial returns,” IFC director and Network18 founder-promoter Raghav Bahl said. “The group has focused more on mounting its own productions in order to generate higher margins and profitability. The Group has recruited talented directors with established track records, who are working on projects in various stages of production including scripting, casting, shooting and post production.”
Hindi
Jio Studios unveils AI-powered Krishna teaser at NAB Show 2026
Global first look of Krishna uses Galleri5 AI pipeline on Azure, Historyverse slate as Jio’s Dhurandhar crosses Rs 3,000cr worldwide.
MUMBAI: Krishna has just dropped a divine teaser and this time the gods are powered by silicon, not just scripture. Jio Studios and Collective Studios’ Historyverse stole the spotlight at the NAB Show 2026 in Las Vegas with the world’s first teaser for their upcoming theatrical feature Krishna, directed by Manu Anand. The big reveal happened during Microsoft’s keynote “Powering Intelligent Media, From AI Experimentation to Real-World Impact,” where the film’s AI-native production pipeline took centre stage alongside Collective Artists Network’s in-house platform, Galleri5.
At the heart of this mythological spectacle lies a fresh cinematic workflow built by Galleri5 on Microsoft Azure’s advanced AI and cloud infrastructure. Forget bolting AI onto traditional VFX or animation, this is an end-to-end, production-grade system woven into every layer: world-building, character creation, shot design and final output. Yet the storytelling remains firmly director-led, emphasising emotional depth, stillness, music and performance rather than pure spectacle. The result? Large-format theatrical cinema rooted in Indian history and culture, but conceived in ways that were simply not possible before.
Collective Artists Network runs Galleri5 natively on Azure, leveraging Microsoft Foundry and cutting-edge AI tools to handle film, episodic and advertising workflows in a secure enterprise environment. Microsoft highlighted Collective as a “Frontier” organisation successfully moving AI from pilot projects to real production-scale deployment in cinema. The technology is also on display at Microsoft’s NAB booth in the West Hall (Booth W1731).
Jio Studios (Media & Content Business, Reliance Industries), president Jyoti Deshpande said the project advances the studio’s mission to take Indian stories global with scale, ambition and authenticity, “With Krishna, we are embracing cutting-edge AI-led filmmaking while democratising these tools to make them more accessible, intuitive and cost-effective for storytellers everywhere.”
Collective Artists Network founder & group CEO Vijay Subramaniam added, “We’re using technology developed in India to carry our culture and history to audiences worldwide at a scale never seen before.”
Microsoft, vice president for telco media & entertainment, gaming Silvia Candiani noted that the media industry has reached an inflection point, “AI is no longer about experimentation but delivering real impact at production scale… By building AI-native creative systems on Microsoft Azure, Collective exemplifies how storytellers can unlock new formats, move faster and realise a true return on intelligence while keeping human creativity at the centre.”
Krishna forms part of Historyverse, Collective Studios’ ambitious slate of history and culture-driven IPs. The slate draws from iconic figures and traditions that shaped the Indian subcontinent, including stories inspired by Kali, Karna and Durga. It builds on the already-released Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh series, showing how ancient narratives can be reimagined for modern screens.
Jio Studios, India’s leading content studio and the media and content arm of Reliance Industries, continues its blockbuster run. The studio’s Dhurandhar franchise led by Dhurandhar and Dhurandhar: The Revenge has become the first Indian film series to cross Rs 3,000 crore worldwide. It also delivered three consecutive years of India’s highest-grossing Hindi films: Stree 2 (2024), Dhurandhar (2025) and Dhurandhar: The Revenge (2026). In just eight years, Jio Studios has assembled a library of over 160 films and series, with more than 60 titles winning over 500 awards. Other notable successes include Laapataa Ladies (India’s official Oscar entry 2025), Stree, Article 370, Shaitaan and Mrs.
The NAB unveiling marks another step in Jio Studios and Collective’s push to blend Indian storytelling talent with frontier technology proving that the future of cinema may well be both ancient in spirit and thoroughly modern in execution. For audiences who love epic tales with a fresh twist, Krishna promises to deliver divine drama, this time with a little help from the cloud.
