Now streaming at a theatre near you: Films in the language of your choice

Theatre audience now have the option of watching films in the language of their choice due to innovations in dubbing

Kannada film Vikrant Rona starring south superstar Sudeep released last year managed to earn additional revenues with a secret weapon. While the film was released in Telugu, Malayalam, and Hindi apart from Kannada, it also did something different that generated a little more box office revenue.

Such films typically run in Tamil in cinemas in Tamil Nadu or play in Kannada in the theatres of Karnataka. But Vikram Rona was made available in all languages, irrespective of where it was screened. So a Malayali watching the film in Chennai could opt for the Malayalam soundtrack. This was thanks to an application called Cinedubs that allows for the translated version to sync with the movie as it is screened in the theatre.

In the case of Vikram Rona, the film’s producer Manjunath Gowda was happy to see the movie reaching a wider audience and generating additional revenue of over Rs 50 lakh, said Cinedubs co-founder Aditya Kashyap.

Language no barrier

Explaining how things work on the app, the co-founder said, "It (Cinedubs) allows people to watch movies in the theatre in their preferred language where the movie is playing in another language. It is a mobile app that works on technology called 3D CFI or three dimensional classified frequency index. Users can access the soundtrack only through the app. They can select their preferred language, plug in their headphones and the soundtrack gets synched with the film playing on the big screen."

The company gets the soundtrack of a film in all the languages it is being released from the production house and makes it available on Cinedubs.

Kashyap said one concern for producers is piracy of their film's soundtrack. To protect content, the soundtracks on the platform come under the DRM or digital rights management security protocol used to secure content that is used by platforms like Netflix and Spotify, among others. "Users can access the soundtrack only through the app. Once the movie gets over, the soundtrack gets deleted and the soundtrack cannot be downloaded on any other device. And the audio only works through headphones and won't play on a phone's speaker," he said.

Cinedubs got its first film, Rocketry: The Nambi Effect, from actor R Madhavan, who has invested in the company. The platform's 13th movie is Adipurush but the film's soundtrack is not yet available on the app due to some ongoing negotiations over the contract.

"Film producer Vivek Kuchibotla of production company People Media Factory (the house behind Adipurush) has given us three movies till now, Karthikeya 2, Dhamaka and Ramabanam, leading to over 20,000 downloads overall," Kashyap said.

The platform is in talks to localise more content for upcoming films in cinemas. "Ajay Devgn-starrer Maidaan is the next big film. Then there is Vijay Sethupathi and Katrina Kaif's Merry Christmas, Animal starring Ranbir Kapoor, Prabhas' Salaar, and Ganapath starring Tiger Shroff, among others. We are trying to get all movies that are releasing in multiple languages. Our target is movies that are releasing in more than one language," he said.

Along with Indian films, the company is in talks with Hollywood studios for English films that are releasing in India in multiple languages like Avatar 2 that released in Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam and Hindi.

"We have had downloads of apps in Canada, Australia, Singapore and that is through word of mouth but the numbers are small. We are in talks with (Hollywood studios) Sony Pictures, Paramount, Warner Bros, among others," said Kashyap.

Extra income

He noted that producers are increasingly, if slowly, coming to accept the platform since it is driving higher attendance at theatres. "Lower footfalls is the biggest challenge the film industry is facing currently. But by giving the option of content in preferred language in theatres like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video at home, we are pulling more audience and that's the advantage we are giving producers and filmmakers," he said.

Kashyap's target is to initially get 5-10 percent additional revenue for a film through its availability on Cinedubs and take the number up to 20-25 percent.

The platform currently has 80,000 downloads and Vikrant Rona has been the highest download generator for the app.

"We have got our patent published in India, Europe and US for the tech and there is less chance of someone replicating it. We have set a benchmark of 5 million downloads to start a subscription model or pay per title. It can be annual at Rs 150, half yearly or quarterly plan or one can just buy the soundtrack of one film title," Kashyap said.

Dub steps up

He said that there are more AI-led dubbing platforms emerging in the market. This is due to movies releasing in theatres and original content of streaming platforms getting dubbed across Indian languages becoming the norm for most marquee releases in the last two years.

There was a surge in dubbed theatrical releases from 15 percent of all releases pre-pandemic to 30 percent in 2022, according to the EY-FICCI 2023 FRAMES report. It added that the audience of subscription-based streaming platforms watch content in two languages on average and with dubbing and subtitling, this number doubles to four. Pan-India film and OTT or over the top releases have led to an improved and upgraded dubbing industry, the report added.

While there are AI-led dubbing platforms like Dubverse.ai or Dubdub.ai, they are focusing on educational content or creator content. In the entertainment space, UniDub.co is working on voice cloning and the app is in the beta version.

"There are some solutions available for dubbing content but they need a lot of data, like hours of audio. We have developed an app that will take a single dialogue or three-second audio and clone the actor's voice. Now, we are moving to emotions. Since we are focusing on movies and series, emotions are critical. Along with cloning, the voice app needs to copy the emotion as well," said UniDub CEO Bharani Yeleswarapu.

The company is in talks with producers of a Malayalam film to dub it into Tamil and Telugu. For films and web series, the platform has not yet dubbed content as the app is in the testing phase currently.

Yeleswarapu noted that manual dubbing requires over 10 artistes if a film is of medium scale and the cost can range between Rs 10 lakh and Rs 10 crore depending on the size of the film.

In the last 10 years, the cost to dub an average film has gone up from Rs 5 lakh to Rs 20 lakh, said the EY-FICCI report.

"Through UniDub, dubbing costs Rs 25,000 including audio editing, syncing of a movie with a runtime of 2.5 hours. And this is attracting small OTT platforms because currently with the manual dubbing cost they are unsure if they will recover the money invested in dubbing if the content is released in multiple languages," he said.