Columbia to distribute Thai movies

       Columbia TriStar Buena Vista Films (Thailand) Ltd (CTBV), a Hollywood distributor, has expanded its business to distribute Thai movies for the first time this year because the segment shows potential.
       Thai films have increasingly stolen market share from Hollywood movies the past seven years, from between 10%and 20% earlier to 45% at present. The overall market was last year valued at 3.4 billion baht.
       "The trend for Thai movies is positive and their box office percentage should be equal to Hollywood in the very near future," managing director James Dhiraputri said.
       The move mirrors what the CTBV network is doing in other countries. The Malaysia office distributes local movies and the business contributes 10-15% of total sales.
       He believes Thai film distribution will contribute 5% of total sales this year.CTBV expects its total sales will reach 600 million baht this year, up from 500 million last year.
       The new service for Thai movies introduces an effective communication package for movie hits that will give the company more bargaining power to deal with cinemas for screening.
       This year, the firm will distribute two Thai movies: the thriller Secret Sunday and the action-drama My Best Bodyguard .Next year, the epic movie,Jamadevi, the Legend of the Queen , will be released.The latter two star HRH Princess Ubolratana and are produced by Oriental Eyes Ltd. The production cost for the three movies is 200 million baht.
       If successful, the firm is likely to distribute Thai films overseas via its network.
       Currently, there are 40-50 Thai films released annually against 140-150 foreign movies.
       The cinema market this year is expected to grow 5%, even considering the economic slowdown and the H1N1 flu outbreak. In the first half of the year,CTBV's total sales reached 1.6 billion baht.
       He said movie-going was a cheap form of entertainment, spurring the market's growth. In the second half of this year,many blockbusters will be released and some of them are expected to earn more than 100 million baht in box-office receipts.