Batting for the much delayed 1,000 acre Noida Film City project, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath has asked officials to launch the project within six months.
The estimated Rs 10,000 crore project is likely to witness the third round of global bidding after failing to attract bidders so far owing to massive investment requirement and bidding terms.
In September 2020, the Yogi government 1.0 had announced plans to develop a state-of-art Noida Film City spanning 1,000 acres in the National Capital Region (NCR).
The site is an hour away from New Delhi and is close to Jewar International Airport, which is now under construction.
Recently, the CM chaired a high level meeting to review the project. He noted the proposed Film City will play an important role in changing the perception of UP.
“The development of Film City should be ensured by assessing the new challenges and scenarios,” he said, underlining to keep the size of Film City unchanged but develop it in a phased manner.
Meanwhile, the Film City will be pitched to attract both serial and reality show producers apart from filmmakers. It will create fresh employment opportunities in the services sector, hotel industry, tourism, logistics etc.
The Noida Film City is envisioned to rival the vibrant Mumbai film industry by providing a world-class filmmaking ecosystem.
Even as the Yogi government 2.0 revised the bidding terms in 20222 for the second round of tendering, the Film City project failed to enthuse bidders.
The first round of global bidding was floated by nodal agency Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA) in November 2021. It attracted a single bidder against the minimum mandate of three bidders.
Now, the Yogi government plans to provide more incentives and tweak the contract terms such as dividing the project into 2-3 phases and floating separate bids to make it more attractive for private bidders.
Moreover, the government is looking to leverage the popularity of OTT and media streaming platforms for the project. A high capacity data centre along with pre-production and the post-production infrastructure, processing labs, VFX and digital technology of international level will be set up.
Earlier this year, the Yogi cabinet had approved the new UP Film Policy 2023 whose provisions will be applicable to films produced in the Noida Film City too.
The new policy offers a 50 per cent subsidy on the cost of films made in local dialects of Awadhi, Braj, Bundeli or Bhojpuri. For films in English, Hindi or other languages, the subsidy will be 25 per cent.
A subsidy of 25 per cent, capped at Rs 50 lakh, would be given for setting up studios/labs in the state. If studios/labs are set up in the backward Purvanchal, Vindhyachal and Bundelkhand regions, the subsidy would be 35 per cent, with a ceiling of Rs 50 lakh.
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For films logging at least half of shoot days in UP, the subsidy would be to a maximum of Rs 1 crore.