Order book stands at $200mn plus: Prime Focus

Double Negative, part of Prime Focus, scored a second consecutive win at the Academy Awards by winning the award for best visual effects for their work on Ex Machina.This is the second year in a row that Dneg has brought home the ‘Best VFX’ Oscar; last year, it was recognized for its work on Christopher Nolan’s ‘Interstellar’. It is also the third Oscar for Dneg in total. In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Prime Focus Founder and Executive Chairman Namit Malhotra discussed the award.Below is the transcript of Namit Malhotra’s interview with CNBC-TV18's Ekta Batra and Reema Tendulkar.Ekta: Give us a sense in terms of financials, how much money did you charge for this considering that you had worked on Interstellar and others before?A: Our deals with various films that we work on range between USD 5-50 million and the Interstellars of the world are more on the higher end of the range and the interesting thing about Ex Machina was that it is an independent British film made at a small budget of USD 15 million and which is why the victory is rather sweet because it had competition from some of the biggest franchisees and some of the biggest of the budget movies of the year.Reema: Could you tell us how much you got paid for this particular movie Ex Machina?A: I don't have the exact details of the deal in front of me but it is between USD 5-7 million range.Ekta: How much have you charged for movies such as Inception and Interstellar just to give us sense in terms of what your fees can go up to?A: As I said we have fee ranging between USD 5-50 million. So, the higher end of the budget movie will have a typical budget of between USD 30-40 million, depending on allocation we get on a film, sometimes it is the entire allocation.Ekta: Your asking rate must have increased, so what are you possibly charging even as a percent of maybe the whole entire budget of the movie?A: Again like I said in certain cases it can be as high as 40 percent, in certain cases it can be about 15 percent depending upon frankly - when you look at James Bond it is actually much more money spend in the physical shoot of the film and to a smaller proportion on the digital side. In other movies it is the opposite where you actually have much more digital effects and they allocate a much bigger portion of the budget and that is the change that we are seeing in the digital world that we are seeing more and more comfort that the filmmakers have in using digital technology to actually replace what was done physically in the prior periods.Reema: Given your track record now I am sure there are lot of directors lining up for Double Negative services. Could you tell us what the pipeline currently stands at that you are working on in terms of money?A: Our traditional order book typically we look at year forward and our combined order book for visual effects, 3D and animation as a business is close to about USD 200 plus million at any given point because it is a rolling order book as we go through projects and deliver them we have other films that keep getting added on and that is approximately how we look at revenue slate.We have a huge marquee of big ticket movies coming out in summer. From Batman, Superman all the way to Star Trek and Alice in Wonderland etc. There is a pretty big line up of big movies.Ekta: Are you looking to strengthen your base in the US markets, maybe inorganically?A: Our deal with Double Negative and the consolidation with Reliance we gave out in India really helped east and the west scale up to a large extent but we don't really look towards any further lead at this point for us to be leading very low than what we already have. It is really about margin expansion and organic revenue growth, both of which look much more certain today than where we were a couple of years ago.