India's Reliance signs $1B-worth of deals with Hollywood

India's Reliance Big Entertainment has signed deals with the production houses of top Hollywood stars George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Nicholas Cage to co-produce movies, the company said Monday.

The media group will provide about $1 billion to develop and co-produce films in Hollywood, company chairman Amit Khanna said at an announcement during the Cannes Film Festival in France.

The company has signed separate deals with Clooney's Smokehouse Productions, Pitt's Plan B Entertainment, Cage's Saturn Productions, Tom Hanks' Playtone Productions, Jim Carrey's JC 23 Entertainment, as well as filmmakers Chris Columbus' 1492 Pictures and Jay Roach's Everyman Pictures, Khanna said.

"We hope to have 30 scripts from which we are looking at 10 films from this slate over the next couple of years," said Khanna, whose company is based in Mumbai.

There would be different genres of films with different financing structures, he said.

"The bigger stars have a first-look deal with Hollywood studios, so the deals could range from co-production to working with the studios," he said.

Reliance Big Entertainment is the media arm of the $100 billion conglomerate Reliance ADA Group, which also has interests in telecommunications and power.

It is owned by India's leading industrialist Anil Ambani, who was listed as the world's sixth richest person by Forbes this year.

Over the past two years, India's movie houses have signed several co-production deals with foreign studios, such as Sony and Walt Disney.

© The Canadian Press, 2008