(6 August 2005 8:00 pm)

MUMBAI: In what could turn out to be a major bulk deal, Sony Entertainment Television is in the process of selling the single telecast rights for 207 Hindi movies to ETV Network.

Sony has signed an agreement with Goldmines Media Ltd, a Mumbai-based listed company which is primarily in the business of movie acquisitions. ETV plans to buy a bulk of movies from Goldmines Media for telecast on its four regional channels for the Hindi heartland - ETV Bihar, ETV Uttar Pradesh, ETV Madhya Pradesh and ETV Rajasthan.

The cost of the transaction for the satellite rights of the 237 movies that ETV intends to buy is put at Rs 13 million. Besides the 207 movies from Sony, Goldmines Media will provide an additional 30 movies to ETV.

"We have signed an agreement with Sony for extending the single telecast rights to ETV. We have also signed a letter of intent with ETV to supply 237 movies. We expect to finalise the deal with ETV soon," says Goldmines Media managing director Manish Shah.

The movies from Sony include Rocky (Sanjay Dutt's debut film), Johnny Mera Naam (Dev Anand and Hema Malini), Sadma (Kamal Hasan and Sri Devi), Utsav (Rekha and Shekhar Suman), Majboor (Amitabh Bachchan), Khoon Pasina (Amitabh Bachchan, Vinod Khanna and Rekha), Zamana Deewana (Shahrukh Khan), Zindagi Ek Jua, Dostana and Moksha.

ETV has earlier done bulk deals with Star India and Zee Telefilms for single telecast rights of Hindi movies. Broadcasters see syndication of movie content as another revenue stream which has opportunity to grow.