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Yash Raj Films Eyes Youth Films, Taps Ashish Patil
MUMBAI: Yash Raj Films, the biggest Bollywood production house, has tapped Ashish Patil from Viacom18 as it prepares to churn out more youth-centric movies.
An experienced hand at connecting with youth content, Patil will be business and creative head of a new division at YRF from 1 April.
The emergence of studios with financial muscle like UTV Software Communications (Walt Disney has majority stake), Reliance ADAG and Network18′s Studio18 has led YRF to look at new frontiers of growth. The expansion into TV content production for Sony Entertainment Television was a step in this direction.
YRF will now depend on Patil for creating movies that are meant for the rapidly-growing youth population in India. “There is a huge need gap in this segment. Nobody is making movies targeted towards youth. I hope the learning and expertise that I got from MTV will be helpful at YRF,” says Patil, who will be reporting to YRF vice chairman Aditya Chopra.
Spearheading the brand repositioning of the Viacom18 music channel, Patil curtailed music content while increasing reality shows to establish MTV as a youth brand.
Patil, who was in a recent restructuring given the new role of Viacom18 senior VP new ventures and GM Youth Movies, decided to move out of the broadcasting business and join the movie-making world that was seeing radical change.
Says producer-director Harry Baweja, “To tell you frankly, 70 per cent of the cinema-going audience today is the youth.”
Bollywood producers recognise that youth-centric movies is emerging as a strong genre. Says trade analyst NP Yadav, “India is a youth country. Youth brands are becoming very powerful. Bollywood has started segmenting audiences and youth-centric movies like 3 Idiots are turning out to be huge successes.”
The maturity of the youth market in India has led some television channels to overhaul their brand and content positioning. While UTV Bindass was launched in 2007 to specifically tap this audience segment, Zoom and Zing are now known as youth brands.
Movie production houses look at such channels to de-risk their business models by selling their youth-centric movies to them.
“For a film production house, this is the right time to have a mix of youth-centric movies in the portfolio. Youth channels need movie content,” says UTV Bindass CEO Zarina Mehta.
