Within days of the announcement about the film city in Uttar Pradesh, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath unveiled an ambitious plan to set up a dedicated infotainment (film city) zone and rolled out an open offer to film fraternity to come to the state. He also announced that 1000 acre of land has been identified in Gautam Budh Nagar by Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority. (YEIDA) where the infotainment zone will be set up with top-class civil, public and technological facilities.
A bevy of film personalities immediately lapped up the prompt action of the state government and said it has been a ‘right step at the right time’. They, in fact, spoke with the Chief Minister who presided over the meeting with them on setting up the film industry in UP. The Chief Minister said that the proposed site is just an hour away from New Delhi and very close to the proposed International Airport at Jewar. Having also been close to Agra, near to the proposed logistic hub in Noida, the proposed dry port and freight corridor thus providing all facilities of transport and movement.
UP CM had said the efforts will be to make this a prominent infotainment zone of the country. He said his government is well aware of the present trend of OTT and media streaming platforms hence the high capacity, world-class data centre along with all pre-production and the post-production infrastructure, processing labs, VFX and digital technology of international level will be provided in this zone.
He said all the policies of industries will be applicable for the takers and single-window mechanism will be used to facilitate those who want to come here and set up their studio. He said the state government’s Film Policy-2018 has already some talking provisions. Even then, if some proposals are forthcoming from the film fraternity, the government will take those into consideration.
A number of film personalities including Vijayendra Prasad, Ashok Pandit, Kailash Kher, , Manoj Joshi, Nitin Desai, Vinod Bachchan, Producer-Director, Pragya Kumar, Udit Narayan and Anup Jalota were present in the meeting while Soundarya Rajnikanth, Anupam Kher, Atul Agnihotri, Paresh Rawal, lyricist Manoj Muntasir and Satish Kaushik interacted with the CM on a virtual platform.
Art Director Nitin Desai offered to set up an entire Film City on the lines of what he has been set up in Mumbai. He was of the opinion that about 80 percent of technicians and workforce in Mumbai film industry hail from UP. In another offer, Sandeep Singh of Vistas Media, a Singapore based company, has offered to set up a film academy with an initial investment of 10 million dollars.
