Celestial Pictures Makes Indian Streaming Deal

HONG KONG: Celestial Pictures has signed its first digital VOD agreement in India, licensing more than 100 titles of Shaw Brothers martial arts movies to BoxTV.

BoxTV subscribers can watch titles such as Blood Brothers, Buddha’s Palm, Return to the 36th Chamber, The Dragon Missile and The Brave Archer. All films will come with English dubbed tracks and are supported with English subtitles. BoxTV launched in February and is India’s newest video streaming portal under Times Internet.

Kristen Tong, the head of legal and business affairs at Celestial Pictures, said, “Celestial Pictures is excited to work with video-on-demand platform, BoxTV, to give Indian consumers access to some of the best martial arts content anytime and anywhere they want. The distribution deal also affirms the incredible value of our library titles, and also provides our content with great exposure on a new digital platform.”

Pandurang Nayak, the business head of BoxTV, added, “Martial arts content has always been very popular content genre in India. Our association with Celestial Pictures brings to us the Shaw Brothers catalogue, one of the foremost and largest producers of kung-fu/martial arts movies. We are excited to bring a bouquet of the highly regarded martial arts library to our premium user base in India. This is in line with our unique push to get the best of world cinema in a legal and high-quality experience for Internet and mobile users in India.”