Cine Asia/HONG KONG – (December 7, 2011) – Scrabble Entertainment Pvt. Ltd., a subsidiary of UFO Moviez India Ltd, and India’s largest DCI-compliant (Digital Cinema Initiatives) digital deployment entity, announced today its commitment to procure Christie digital cinema® projectors valued at approximately $40 million for rollout in the Indian market. Scrabble is the only aggregator of DCI-compliant screens in India with Virtual Print Fee (VPF) agreements with major Hollywood studios. This order includes the award-winning Christie CP2210, Christie CP2220 and Christie CP2230 digital cinema projectors from the Christie Solaria™ Series. The installation of these projectors has begun and is slated to be completed by the end of 2012.
“Christie has proven to be a reliable brand for the cinema industry for many years. Scrabble partnered with Christie four years ago for the first phase of DCI rollout with the installation of 300 screens across India. In the second phase, we plan to rollout an additional 1200 screens across premium Indian multiplex and single screen properties, further reinforcing the confidence we have in Christie. Christie’s digital cinema projectors are not only reliable, but unrivalled in terms of resolution, brightness and performance,” said Ranjit Thakur, Chief Executive Officer, Scrabble Entertainment.
UFO Moviez, the world’s largest satellite-based digital cinemas network, recently acquired a majority stake in Scrabble Entertainment.
According to Kapil Agarwal, Joint Managing Director, UFO Moviez, “We have very aggressive plans for the next phase of our DCI rollout in India. Riding on the strength of our innovative business model, the UFO-Scrabble combination will exponentially increase the number of DCI-compliant cinemas from our existing 400 to 1500 by the end of 2012, providing Hollywood content owners unparalleled reach in the Indian subcontinent. This transition is especially significant as UFO has over 2,750 non-DCI digital screens in India. We are delighted to work with Christie for this significant deployment. It is a well-known fact that Christie is leading on many fronts in digital cinema technology, including 4K and screening movies at higher frame rate than the current standard. Through this partnership with Christie, we hope to leverage on these advancements in digital cinema solutions and bring them to cinemas in India.”
“This is a milestone deployment for Scrabble Entertainment. This rollout will transform the world’s largest film industry and bring it to a whole new level of digital entertainment. We look forward to partnering with UFO-Scrabble to equip more cinemas with state-of-the-art digital cinema solutions and further boost the DCI-compliant rollout in India,” commented Lin Yu, vice president, Christie Asia Pacific.