Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty , winner of the Celebrity Big Brother, show has signed a mega-bucks deal to play the lead in a grand Bollywood musical, its producer said today.

Farhath Hussain said in London that the musical, yet to be titled, would be staged in September this year.

Hussain who has earned a name for himself in show business organising mega Bollywood concerts in around the world planned to sign a top leading man, choreographer and music director from the Indian film industry. (more…)

BBC Worldwide’s trade event BBC Showcase is taking place in Brighton England till 1 March 2007. 560 buyers from all over the globe are in attendance. The annual event sees BBC Worldwide generate programme sales and broker international funding deals for co productions on behalf of the BBC, other UK networks and independent producers.

Delegate numbers the BBC says have grown as buyers from traditional television networks are increasingly joined by a new generation of buyers looking to license content for digital media platforms such as mobile television, independent video on demand services and digital extensions to traditional television networks.

The past year has seen BBC Worldwide secure content deals around the world with major digital media platforms across Europe, Asia Pacific and the Americas, including Vodafone, Orange, T-Online, Telstra, ONO, Netflix, Amazon US, Hanaromedia Korea and Telefonica. Combined with strong growth in traditional programme sales, these new markets for content are seeing BBC Worldwide’s Global TV Sales division well on target to make around £190million (US$370million) this financial year, up from last year’s £171million (US$333million). (more…)

Neo Sports has announced the details of its Pan Asian expansion as part of its mission to be a Pan Asian cricket channel by the middle of 2007. These markets include the Middle East, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Shortly, the cricket dedicated channel will also commence broadcasting in Malaysia and Singapore.

Neo Sports Broadcast Pvt Ltd CEO Shashi Kalathil said, “in barely three months of our commercial launch in india, we have succeeded in a comprehensive Pan Asian roll-out. Asia is a very important market for us as it is an amalgamation of cultures and nationalities with a huge indian ethnic community.”

The revenues from the Pan Asian operations of Neo Sports outside india, between subscription and advertising are expected to add up to approximately $ 26 million in 2007-2008 with an approximately 30 per cent EBiDTA margin, as incremental cost for international operations is relatively insignificant since the bulk of the costs are already absorbed in the indian operations, informs an official release. (more…)

Show Time:Tomorrow at 9:00 pm on HBO

Directed by: Mike Bigelow

Genre: Comedy

Duration: 1 hr 19 min

Starring: Rob Schneider and Eddie Griffin.

He may not be handsome, but he certainly can attract … trouble. Deuce Bigalow (Schneider, The Benchwarmers) is at it again.

At the behest of his friend, pimp T.J. Hicks (Griffin, Date Movie) he heads for Amsterdam. T.J. is still into pimping men, but he’s in deep because a serial killer is murdering his “man-whores,” and he’s the number one suspect.

T.J. hits upon the idea of using Deuce as bait to find out the killer’s real identity. Yet again, Deuce stumbles and bumbles his way through being the seductive, manly stud that he thinks European women will find hot. (more…)

For making the ZEE channels a global broadcasting network, its chairman Subhash Chandra will be launch channels in various languages across the globe. Subhash said ZEE Telefilms is all set to launch a Russian entertainment channel in Russia and a local language news channel in Indonesia. This is the first attempt by an Indian broadcaster to launch entertainment channels in an international market in the local language.

The news channels of India like STAR News, Aaj Tak and NDTV have launched international versions in markets like West Asia and Europe, NDTV recently entered into a joint venture with Astro Networks to launch news channels in Indonesia and it is also expected to launch news channels in Malaysia. (more…)