MUMBAI: Former Indian cricket captain MS Dhoni has expanded his business interests further by signing an exclusive, long-term content creation deal with production house Banijay Asia through his newly floated company Dhoni Entertainment, Economic Times reports.
Banijay Asia is a 50:50 JV between Banijay, the French-based global production and distribution company and former Endemol Shine India MD Deepak Dhar. The idea behind the partnership is to provide premium entertainment content to Indian and South East Asian markets across media platforms, the business daily reports.
This is a first for the celebrated cricketer, who has featured in several TV advertisements and has had a biopic, ‘MS Dhoni: The Untold Story’ made on his life. The movie was co-produced by his business manager Arun Pandey and released in 2016.
“After my biopic, I always wanted to do something in the entertainment space,” Dhoni was quoted as saying to ET.
“It always captivated me, kept me gripped as there are a lot of fresh concepts I would like to bring; never-seen-before content to the table.”
“I decided to partner with Banijay Asia for the quality of content they have created so far, and with this partnership, I look forward to bring something which is more than exciting and stimulating!
“We are open to all kinds of subjects and not just restricting ourselves to sports for the background I have. We are working on various concepts right now and have few projects in the pipeline, which we will announce soon.”
“With the entire digital ecosystem evolving, we are seeing a great demand for content. Naturally, it is attracting big personalities. What we need is to bring in players with vision and credibility,” Dhar stated.
“Together, we are excited as we aim to bring an array of differentiated shows for our audiences across platforms.”
