Hindi
Indian Film Company plans to pump in Rs 1.5 billion in six months
MUMBAI: The Indian Film Company (IFC), a specialist film investment firm where TV18 Group has substantial interest, is planning to invest Rs 1.5 billion on various film projects over six months.
“The pipeline for deployment in the last quarter of fiscal 2008 and first quarter of FY 2009 is expected to be around Rs 1.5 billion,” a source in the company tells Indiantelevision.com.
IFC has invested Rs 1.05 billion on film projects and for signing of key directors, actors and writers in the third quarter of this fiscal. The total fund deployment of the company has been Rs 2.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents till December-end 2007, the source adds.
The future projects include Striker, a co-production with Chandan Arora’s Make Films which is expected to release by May 2008; Panduranga, the first regional language (Telugu) film that IFC has signed and is co-producting with K Raghavendra Rao; Bubblegum, a co-production with Paramhans and expected release date is October 2008; and “Production No 3” (tentatively titled) to be produced by Priti Sinha’s Reel Life Entertainment and released by first quarter of FY 2010.
IFC has released recent movies like Jab We Met and Welcome. IFC has also acquired the worldwide distribution rights of Singh is Kinng ( a comedy directed by Anees Bazmee and stars Akshay Kumar and Katrina Kaif) from Vipul Shah Productions and Golmaal Returns from Shree Ashtivinayak.
Network18 Fincap Ltd has 18.18 per cent stake in IFC and BK Media Mauritius Pvt Ltd 3.45 per cent. Raghav Bahl is a director of IFC and substantial shareholder of both Network 18 Fincap and BK Media Mauritius. Viacom Brand Solutions holds 4.55 per cent in the film company.
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.
