Mumbai: Eros Now, a leading over-the-top (OTT) South Asian entertainment platform owned by Eros STX Global Corporation (NYSE: ESGC) (“ErosSTX” or “the Company”), a global entertainment company is launching a month-long Bollywood Film Festival on Facebook Watch this Diwali. As part of this collaboration, Eros Now will premiere a movie every day from its massive library of over 12,000 Indian films and stream it on Eros Now’s Facebook page from 3rd November to 2nd December. The movies will be powered by Mzaalo, a blockchain-based video streaming application in the gamified video and entertainment ecosystem.
Eros Now has carefully picked the movies to ensure the right balance of genres, scale, and relevance during the festive season. The list includes popular titles from the 90s and 2000s such as Tere Naam, Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Devdas, Cocktail, Love Aajkal to popular releases in the last decade like Shubh Mangal Savdhan, Raanjhanaa, Manmarziyaa, Vicky Donor to new releases such as Hathi Mere Sathi and more.
Commenting on the campaign, Ramakrishnan Laxman, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Eros Now says, “Our data science-led research indicates that Bollywood movies have a strong repeat watch value. And during festival season, this repeat viewing increases many folds. With people preferring to stream long form content on their devices nowadays, this partnership with Facebook allows us to extend the joy of watching the old and new gems of Bollywood this Diwali to billions of socially savvy audiences. We believe this campaign will add to the celebratory experience of Diwali in people’s life.”
Paras Sharma, Director, Media Partnerships, Meta says, “Our focus in India with Facebook Watch has been reflective of the diverse consumer tastes in the country. With movies and cinema being extremely popular with our community, we are excited to partner with Eros Now to enable fans to watch their favorite Bollywood movies on Facebook Watch. We hope this experience will enable people to share, connect and entertain themselves with content they like on Facebook.”
Vikram Tanna, Chief Operating Officer, Mzaalo says, “This industry-first initiative is a great example of democratizing the best of Bollywood content. Our association with Eros opens new avenues of user–brand experiences to drive Social Entertainment Commerce. We are certain that this unique festive partnership will pave a path for more engagement and result in further uptake of our content.”
Eros Now has a 10 million-strong community of fans on Facebook, and this collaboration between the two companies will provide fans with an interactive viewing experience. Bollywood forms an integral part of the Indian consumer video experience, and both partners are committed to building online video viewership in India.