Reliance Big Entertainment, DreamWorks close to finalizing $1.5 billion joint film venture

This is not the first time, Reliance has reached out to Hollywood's film production houses. Earlier in May, Ambani hobnobbed with top Hollywood stars such as Jim Carrey, Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, Nicolas Cage and George Clooney and announced that his company would provide financing worth $1 billion to their production houses.

Also in March, Reliance bought a several multiplexes in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington D C, among other states, giving it 250 screens in 28 North American cities.

The deal with DreamWorks, which entails producing 30 movies across a five-year period, would raise the global profile of Ambani's entertainment arm and allow it to gatecrash into Hollywood's mega-billion dollars entertainment industry. However, it would not give it creative control over DreamWorks, which has an impressive track record of producing big budget box office successes like "Saving Private Ryan," "Dreamgirls," "Transformers," "Gladiator," "Shrek" and the latest hit "Kung Fu Panda."

India's Bollywood is the world's most prolific movie industry with more than 1,000 releases a year. It is estimated at nearly $12.5 billion in the latest study by Ernst & Young but it has not, till recently, begun to formalize its operations under big corporate financiers like Ambani and look abroad.

Economic slowdown and fallout of the subprime crisis have left US hedge funds and financiers jittery who are reluctant to invest in movies that star top-paying actors and actresses but whose box office success are not guaranteed.

Taking advantage of the circumstances and flush with funds, Reliance has tapped Hollywood in deals that would catapult the company into the big league of the global entertainment business, while, at the same time, giving Hollywood the much needed capital to make movies.