From Kabali suits to iconic songs, more Rajinikanth movie NFTs on offer

Superstar Rajinikanth is creating waves in the non-fungible token (NFT) space with his movie-based digital collectibles.

While the actor has not officially launched his own NFT, marketplace Diginoor.io, which has partnered with AVM studios, Sivaji productions and V Creations, is offering digital assets from three blockbuster Rajinikanth movies including Sivaji, Chandramukhi and Kabali.

An NFT is a unit of data stored on a digital ledger called a blockchain that certifies a digital asset to be unique and, therefore, not interchangeable. NFTs can be used to represent items such as photos, videos, audio, and other types of digital files.

Launched on the actor’s birthday on December 12, the film-based NFTs include deleted scenes and metaverse accessories. Buyers can also get access to unseen behind the scenes (BTS) footage of the three movies with NFTs starting from $12.  Rajinikanth fans can also own accessories like a digital Kabali suit or props from the movies that can be used in the digital world.

In addition, the digital collection includes songs from the films Sivaji and Chandramukhi by musicians and singers like A.R. Rahman, S.P. Balasubrahmanyam, Udit Narayan and Krishnakumar Kunnath, better known as KK. Some of the songs offered in the digital collection are Athiradee, Sahana, Vaaji Vaaji and Baleillaka from the film Sivaji and Ra Ra, Atinthom from Chandramukhi.

The platform is offering 60 different NFTs from Rajinikanth films.

“Diginoor is auctioning iconic moments for fans to own forever, such as Singham single ah thaan varum, Magizhchi and also the iconic opening sequence of ’Super Star Rajini’ and much more at a base price of $1,212 for 12 hours and 12 minutes starting at 12 pm,” said Shaamil Karim, Founder, Diginoor.

He added that users can make purchases using credit and debit cards along with cryptocurrency.

This is Diginoor’s second NFT drop after the platform saw strong response in July for the first collection of digital assets from Rajinikanth’s film Sivaji: The Boss.

In the first drop on Diginoor.io, around 17 NFTs of Sivaji: The Boss were sold in the price range of $99-1,500. The platform had sold about 30-40 percent of the Sivaji content in the first NFT drop and launched the remaining on December 12.

When it comes to the NFT segment in India, movies are making a mark and NFT players say that digital assets of films are a great way to introduce a concept like NFT in the market as the country has a strong films fan base.

Banking on this, Karim along with Yash Rathod, his friend and Founder of Diginoor, have added 5,000-6000 movie titles in the content pipeline.

Diginoor has also signed rights for two of Tamil actor Vijay’s films including Mersal and Theri, along with Vijay Sethupathi and R. Madhavan’s Vikram Vedha. The platform has also partnered with production houses like Reliance Entertainment to offer digital collectibles of Bollywood ventures.

Along with Diginoor, other NFT marketplaces are also confident about movie-based digital assets. Recently, Amitabh Bachchan’s NFT collections of Madhushala, a collection of poetry by his father Harivansh Rai Bachchan recorded in the actor’s voice, autographed posters and collectibles garnered $966,000 (about Rs 7.18 crore) in an auction organised by NFT platform BeyondLife.club.

The latest movie star to join the NFT space was Tamil actor Kamal Haasan when NFT marketplace Fantico announced the actor’s digital collectibles including 100-1,000 NFTs, offering customized posters and avatars, among others.

Fantico had started its journey with cinema-based NFTs and had offered digital collectibles from Indian cinema including the original theatrical artwork of Mughal-E-Azam and showcards of the 1972 classic Sholay with the signature of C. Mohan, who designed the movie’s logo.

The platform has a large collection of original, preserved Bollywood pictures since 1904 from Kamat Foto Flash’s archives, among others. Kamat Foto Flash is the photo studio that shot the publicity stills for about 800 Hindi films.

Dhruv Saxena, chief strategy officer of Singapore-based Vistas Media that owns Fantico, in an earlier interview to Moneycontrol had noted that while both movie and sports NFTs are showing strong traction, the legalities around sports takes a little more work to get through and the size of the contracts are bigger. As for movie NFTs, he had said that they have great demand but the supply is also good.