Bollywood NFT Platform ‘Social Swag’ Does a Record Sale of 10 Lakh Worth of NFTs Within an Hour the Launching 83 Movie’s Official NFTs

‘83’ movie, while stirring the box-office with its record-breaking collections, it is also shaking the NFT industry with its record sales. The movie’s official digital collectibles (NFTs) which were launched by India’s first Bollywood NFT marketplace which are both purchasable as well saleable, ‘Social Swag’ made another ground-breaking record by selling 10 lakh worth of NFTs within an hour the launching the movie’s official NFTs.

NFT Marketplace Social Swag (nft.socialswag.com) is an influencer-led fan engagement platform, for the exclusive drop of official digital collectibles (NFTs) of movies. The NFTs sold by the platform comprise an incredible portfolio of digital and phigital (digital + physical) NFTs that will appeal both to Bollywood and Cricket fans, as well as NFT collectors and enthusiasts, globally. Based on the true story of India’s iconic 1983 World Cup victory against the West Indies, the 83 movie stars Ranveer Singh, Deepika Padukone, and Pankaj Tripathi, among other Bollywood icons. The NFTs include autographed physical cricket memorabilia, certified-authentic video moments, PFP-style animated digital avatars, and autographed unseen posters and images.

Minted on the Polygon blockchain, the 83 movie NFTs comprise a few distinct collections:

• Prestige Collection: 16 one-copy-only asset-backed NFTs of pivotal movie scenes bundled with physical cricket memorabilia from 83, autographed by the stars.
• For Your Eyes Only Collection: A collection of five certified authentic video moments from the movie that have not made the final cut.
• Taste of Success Collection: A collection of 20 exclusive PFP-style animated digital avatars designed by world-renowned artivists Vidhushi and Medhavini Yadav, both alumni of IIT Bombay, along with animator Ashwin Vasudevan and sound artist Anupama Thakur.

"India as a nation has always been obsessed with both Cricket and Bollywood and this time too the people of India have shown their love from all corners of the country, especially Tier I and II cities. While we were expecting purchases mainly from metros, cities like Jabalpur, Kanpur, Nagpur, Trivedaram, Solapur etc. took lead in accepting the buzzing culture of NFTs.” said Atharva Sabnis, CEO of NFT Labs, technology partner to Social Swag.

“With NFTs, for the first time, people can own a piece of that moment and own a piece of history! A possibility that no one would have imagined before Web 3.0. We are glad that we can facilitate this and thank the team at 83 for partnering with us to execute this. And with the kind of response we have received for the NFTs, we are thrilled to announce that all the buyers are now entitled to free NFTs with our next airdrop.”, he further added.

About Social Swag:

Social Swag is a new-age platform that connects Indian masses with celebrities, influencers, bloggers, and other inspirational individuals, through personal interactions and learning forums. By combining entertainment and learning, Social Swag enables interactions in multiple ways including masterclasses, live-chats, shout-outs, and virtual selfies to name a few.

With its deep relationships in the Indian entertainment sector, Social Swag is positioned to become the world’s largest marketplace for officially licensed Bollywood NFTs. These NFTs will be mint-condition, exclusive, tradeable across chains, and packed with utility.

AI Identifies Social Bias Trends in Bollywood, Hollywood Movies

ORGINIALLY  PUBLISHED AT - CMU.EDU

Babies whose births were depicted in Bollywood films from the 1950s and 60s were more often than not boys; in today's films, boy and girl newborns are about evenly split. In the 50s and 60s, dowries were socially acceptable; today, not so much. And Bollywood's conception of beauty has remained consistent through the years: beautiful women have fair skin.

Fans and critics of Bollywood — the popular name for a $2.1 billion film industry centered in Mumbai, India — might have some inkling of all this, particularly as movies often reflect changes in the culture. But these insights came via an automated computer analysis designed by Carnegie Mellon University computer scientists.

The researchers, led by Kunal Khadilkar and Ashiqur R. KhudaBukhsh of CMU's Language Technologies Institute (LTI), gathered 100 Bollywood movies from each of the past seven decades along with 100 of the top-grossing Hollywood moves from the same periods. They then used statistical language models to analyze subtitles of those 1,400 films for gender and social biases, looking for such factors as what words are closely associated with each other.

"Most cultural studies of movies might consider five or 10 movies," said Khadilkar, a master's student in LTI. "Our method can look at 2,000 movies in a matter of days."

It's a method that enables people to study cultural issues with much more precision, said Tom Mitchell, Founders University Professor in the School of Computer Science and a co-author of the study.

"We're talking about statistical, automated analysis of movies at scale and across time," Mitchell said. "It gives us a finer probe for understanding the cultural themes implicit in these films." The same natural language processing tools might be used to rapidly analyze hundreds or thousands of books, magazine articles, radio transcripts or social media posts, he added.

For instance, the researchers assessed beauty conventions in movies by using a so-called cloze test. Essentially, it's a fill-in-the-blank exercise: "A beautiful woman should have BLANK skin." A language model normally would predict "soft" as the answer, they noted. But when the model was trained with the Bollywood subtitles, the consistent prediction became "fair." The same thing happened when Hollywood subtitles were used, though the bias was less pronounced.

To assess the prevalence of male characters, the researchers used a metric called Male Pronoun Ratio (MPR), which compares the occurrence of male pronouns such as "he" and "him" with the total occurrences of male and female pronouns. From 1950 through today, the MPR for Bollywood and Hollywood movies ranged from roughly 60 to 65 MPR. By contrast, the MPR for a selection of Google Books dropped from near 75 in the 1950s to parity, about 50, in the 2020s.

Dowries — monetary or property gifts from a bride's family to the groom's — were common in India before they were outlawed in the early 1960s. Looking at words associated with dowry over the years, the researchers found such words as "loan," "debt" and "jewelry" in Bollywood films of the 50s, which suggested compliance. By the 1970s, other words, such as "consent" and "responsibility," began to appear. Finally, in the 2000s, the words most closely associated with dowry — including "trouble," "divorce" and "refused" — indicate noncompliance or its consequences.

"All of these things we kind of knew," said KhudaBukhsh, an LTI project scientist, "but now we have numbers to quantify them. And we can also see the progress over the last 70 years as these biases have been reduced."

A research paper by Khadilkar, KhudaBukhsh and Mitchell was presented at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence virtual conference earlier this month.

Bollywood Filmmaker Shiv Panniker Launches Anime Comic Book - Gone Case

Shiv Panikker, a seasoned Producer, Director & Screenwriter from the Bollywood industry recently launched his first ever graphic novel 'Gone Case' , a horror/mystery comic book that Indian audiences would be able to relate to.

Published by Blue Rose Publishers, 'Gone Case' is a series of events all connected together after tumbling down the rabbit hole that connects to one big case. A Mumbai based cop with a dark past is tasked with escorting an escaped inmate back to the asylum. Along the way, he suspects that the inmate might be a serial killer & the asylum may be haunted.

"Two years ago while working on Ryan Reynolds & Michael Bay's film set for Netflflix's 6 Underground, I got inspired to write my own story. Just the scale of what a Netflix production could be in today's day and age made me believe that anyone can do it in their own little way, if they have a good content-driven story. After pitching the script to a producer, I was told to reduce the intensity, add a couple of songs and a love story arc to Gone Case, that's when I realised that Gone Case isn't ready for the screen as yet," said Shiv while speaking on how he came up with Gone Case.

"In 2019 I fell victim to debit card theft while living in Bangkok. Living in a foreign country with your only source of finances blocked was one of the most nightmarish experiences I've ever faced. I was later informed that debit card theft is not uncommon & that the information is sold on the dark web. To my amazement I then found out that 98% of the card information being sold online were Indian. I knew I had to talk about this and bring awareness about the dark web in my own little way and that is one of the main reasons why I refused to commercialise the story," added Shiv.

"I've always been a lifelong fan of comic books. Living in Bangkok, and seeing the street artists make their own Batman and Spiderman stories inspired me to take the leap and turn my story into a comic book of my own. Thus, was born the idea of 'Gone Case'. It is a book that I've put a lot of thought and heart into, and a book that I believe a lot of Anime & comic book lovers are going to enjoy," said Shiv, speaking on the launch of his book.

Two weeks into the launch, the trailer for the comic went viral on Shiv's social media and the comic book became Amazon's #1 hottest new release and even debuted in the top 50 bestselling comics list. Since then, the book has garnered critical praise for it's dark and mysterious storyline, with critics calling it a new alternative for Indian comic book fans.

Gone Case, published by Blue Rose Publishers & is available in paperback & digital format on:

Amazon: tinyurl.com/yb88ycss | Kindle: tinyurl.com/y57bd8t7 | Flipkart: tinyurl.com/yyokhkn7

"It was a pleasure working with a creative personality like Shiv on this book. It is an honour to have him join our existing family of 5000+ authors. The moment we read the storyline for the first time, we knew instantly that it is one that would change Indias comic book industry forever. The characters will connect with every comic book lover on many different levels. Gone Case is a must-read and I am confident it will leave a long lasting impact," said Syed Arshad, Director of BlueRose Publishers.

As a fan of the hugely successful Marvel & DC universe, Shiv felt that Indian comics and characters lacked the recognition they deserved. He looked to create an enthralling experience that would keep readers hooked onto the story and illustrations which would immerse them into the world of the characters.

For this, he chose to work with the best of graphic designers and illustrators.

Gone Case has a blend of different styles. The illustrator Karan Danda has given an Anime vibe to the illustrations, while the colourist, Warrens Rojas who hails from Venezuela added a commercial 'action packed comic book' feel to the colours. The editor is Shiv's long time collaborator Myron D'silva. Myron & Shiv started their careers together as assistant directors 7 years ago.

Recently, Shiv also launched the first look of the Gone Case action figure line, for which he has partnered up with a Malaysian toy company. Over the past few days, pictures of the collection have garnered quite a response on social media in the Malaysian & Indian toy collector community.

While the initial idea for the author was to pitch 'Gone Case' as a feature film, he decided to maintain a comic book feel as it allowed him to tell the story in the most authentic way possible, with no alterations to the plot. However, the author is currently working on Gone Case 2 and has already penned down an entire universe with a live action film & an anime series around the franchise.

For more information and updates, follow Shiv Panikker on:

Youtube Channel: www.youtube.com/watchv=yLmDlKA-BvA&feature=youtu.be

Official Instagram: www.instagram.com/shivpanikker/hl=en

"Gone Case" Official IG: www.instagram.com/gonecaseofficial/hl=en

"Gone Case" Official Website: www.whatisgonecase.com

Airtel, Lionsgate Tie-up to Launch Lionsgate Play in India for Premium Content including Blockbuster Film franchises, New and Recent Theatrical Releases

Partnership Gives Airtel Customers access to Premium Content including Blockbuster Film Franchises, New and Recent Theatrical Releases and Deep Library

Bharti Airtel (“Airtel”), India’s largest integrated telecommunications company, global content leader Lionsgate (NYSE: LGF.A, LGF.B) and Starzplay, the international premium subscription platform from Starz, have joined hands to bring premium content from Lionsgate Play to customers in India.

The partnership will give Airtel customers access to a deep portfolio of critically acclaimed and beloved Lionsgate feature film content, which will be available on Airtel Xstream app and web platforms. Airtel Xstream app has a catalogue of over 10,000 movies and shows along with 400 TV channels.  

By expanding the Indian market’s access to premium quality content on a leading digital platform, the collaboration is expected to be a compelling value proposition for the Indian cinephile audience. The content will be available in multiple Indian languages and spread across the horror, comedy, drama, action, thriller, documentary and other genres. 



Lionsgate Play’s initial offering includes the blockbuster Hunger Games and Twilight Saga franchises, multiple Academy Award® winner La La Land, and the critically-acclaimed international breakout hit Wonder among its deep slate of box office successes. 

In addition Airtel customers will have access to recent hits like American Assassin, Robin Hood, The Spy Who Dumped Me, A Simple Favor, Saban’s Power Rangers as well as marquee library titles such as Divergent, Now You See Me 2, Gods of Egypt, Letters To Juliet and Reservoir Dogs.



Commenting on the partnership, Adarsh Nair – Chief Product Officer, Bharti Airtel said: “We are thrilled to partner with Lionsgate to bring exciting content from their library to our customers as part of Airtel Thanks program. Our mission is to make Airtel Xstream the most loved digital entertainment platform in India and enable best-in-class experience across a range of connected devices and applications. We will continue to forge long-term strategic partnerships with the top content producers from around the world as part of our mission and look forward to collaborating with Lionsgate to delight customers in India.”     

“The partnership with Airtel is a great opportunity to expand the Lionsgate Play premium offering with a best-in-class partner, a vast feature film library and a compelling user experience for our customers. Telcos play a huge role in increasing the availability of premium content on digital platforms, and we’re proud to join forces with a partner like Airtel that combines enormous reach, a powerful brand and unparalleled distribution expertise. This is another major step forward in bringing an exciting and unique content experience to our Indian audience,” said Rohit Jain, Managing Director Lionsgate Play South Asia.

About Airtel India

Bharti Airtel Limited is a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 18 countries across Asia and Africa. Headquartered in New Delhi, India, the company ranks amongst the top 3 mobile service providers globally in terms of subscribers. In India, the company's product offerings include 2G, 3G and 4G wireless services, mobile commerce, fixed line services, high speed home broadband, DTH, enterprise services including national & international long distance services to carriers. In the rest of the geographies, it offers 2G, 3G, 4G wireless services and mobile commerce. Bharti Airtel had over 411 million customers across its operations at the end of September 2019. 

About Lionsgate Play

Lionsgate Play, a premium streaming service from Lionsgate India and Starz, offers curated Hollywood content for Indian consumers, with much of the content available in multiple Indian languages.

Lionsgate India, one of the most recent entrants in the South Asian market, distributes premium content to linear and digital platforms across the region. It develops and produces original local Indian language content as well as adaptations of globally successful content. Starz, a Lionsgate subsidiary, is a leading global media and entertainment company that produces and distributes premium streaming content to worldwide audiences across subscription television platforms. It offers subscribers more than 7,500 distinct premium television episodes and feature films, including STARZ original series, first-run movies and other popular programming.

Blockchain-based E-Wallet S Block Quantum Leap Ties with Running Horses Films for Bollywood Collaboration

Singapore-based S Block Quantum Leap and Running Horses Films today announced their first Bollywood Co-production.

S Block Quantum Leap is a global Blockchain company and along with this one of its kind collaboration also launched their S Block E-Wallet. For this occasion, Peter Buser, President of S Block Foundation and Dr. Eric Ong, International Community Advisor were present. Along with them Bollywood Actor Ranjha Vikram Singh of Running Horses Films also graced the launch.

Talking about this collaboration, Ranjha Vikram Singh said, “We are excited about this new venture and this is just the start of a great partnership. We shall be releasing the first motion poster of the movie really soon and we are sure this movie will be remembered by the audiences for the time to come.”

Dr. Eric Ong, International Community Advisor said, “In India entertainment is a billion dollar industry. We are bullish about our plans for this market and really looking forward to our very first collaboration with Running Horses Films. The viewers can expect to see more from us in the times to come.”

Ranjha Vikram Singh is a well-known Indian actor who was seen in blockbuster films like Heropanti, 25 Kille, Rana Vikrama etc. He has now branched out into production as well and has already produced two films under his banner, Running Horses Films. This is the third movie that is being produced under this banner and for the same they are collaborating with a global behemoth S Block.

The event was a mega success and the audience just can’t wait to see the first look of the movie.

~ NewsVoir

Armsprime Media Launches the Official App of Viral Bhayani, the Most Followed Paparazzi Photographer

Armsprime Media Pvt. Ltd. a tech-based media company that builds and produces apps for celebrities and social media influencers proudly announces the launch of “The Viral Bhayani App”. One of the world’s most followed paparazzi photographers launches an app that promises to be your one stop destination for Bollywood entertainment.

Saurabh Kushwah, Founder & CEO quotes: “It gives us great pleasure to announce the launch of The Viral Bhayani App. As a company, we look to diversify our portfolio of social influencer offerings. Our key focus is the unique technology we have created and the level of customization we can do in break-speed time. We give the power to content creators to increase their fan engagement, monetize their content and own the channel they operate. We have a lot of exciting features in-store and with our AI-backed tech, content creators now have the opportunity of defining the value of their content and monetizing it. It helps creators decide price points of their own content and enables us to produce hyper-personalized and exclusive content for them."

About The Viral Bhayani App

Viral Bhayani is one of the most followed paparazzi photographers in the world, with over 1 million followers on Instagram. His app boasts of a lot of exciting features and content such as unseen footage, exclusive interviews, live videos and all the latest Bollywood news, updates and gossip. The Bollywood buffs are in for a treat with an intriguing Fan Leaderboard that promises exciting prizes for the Fan of the Month. Welcome to your one stop destination for Bollywood entertainment!

About Armsprime Technology

In the ever-changing world of social media and influencers, Armsprime puts the powers in your hand to create and manage your own content. We offer a 360-turnkey solution from designing your app, customised features, content, production to marketing and getting the maximum out of your content.

We drive engagement and make sure you are compensated and not the networks. Where communication is direct, and the control is in your hands.

Download The Viral Bhayani App: http://onelink.to/eacq5x

Bangalore based Zeneflix is Platform for Promoting Movies of Small Budget

A movie is a product of a lot of hard work and toil of a lot of people, so when it tanks at the box office, it affects more than just the producer and the production house. While the content of the movie plays a major role in its fate at the ticket counter, it has often been seen that sometimes good, critically acclaimed movies also miss the mark because a lot of people didn't even come to know about the existence of such a movie. Hence, just like goods and services, lack of promotion of a movie plays a very crucial role in its business at the box office. Bangalore-based Zeneflix is a movie promotion platform that aims to solve this problem.

Launched in February this year, ZeneFlix is movie promotion platform for Hollywood and Bollywood movies. It can be extended to many other movie industries around the world.

Movies produced in one part of the world are often unable to reach worldwide viewers due to language and cultural barriers. While mega Hollywood movies like Avatar, Fast and Furious, are able to get the cash registers ringing almost all around the world. But, movies made within the budget of $10 million to $60 million are unable to make more money from international markets due to lack of resources at hand. Thats where, Zeneflix steps in.

Zeneflix's Intellectual Property protected platform solves this problem associated with movie promotion and helps in promoting movies across the world. The platform currently hosts contests related to movies where anyone can answers questions regarding the a particular movie and win cool prizes.

According to the startup, the closest competitor that they see for their platform, is IMDB, the Internet movie database. But, IMDB does not promote movies unlike Zeneflix.

The platform has been conceived and delivered by Mrityunjay Patil, who has a total of 6 years of IT experience. He is currently functioning as the CEO of the startup.

Mrityunjay's future plans for the platform is to extend it to movie industries all around the world including Bollywood (India), Japanese, Korean, and even South Indian movie Industries.

[Top image - Shutterstock]

Fimly Hero- An app for people high on Bollywood

Is Bollywood in your blood? Then, this app has been designed especially for you.  Filmy Hero is a mobile application that brings its users all the latest Bollywood movie trailers, movie reviews, promotional clips, music videos and much more. All this is made available to users on the go in HD quality and a stunning interface.

The app has so far received awesome reviews from its users and is becoming a big it among Bollywood maniacs. It can be downloaded free of cost by Android and iOS users.

The app comes packed with some amazing features to satisfy all the needs of Bollywood buffs. The app provides the user with every minute detail about each and every movie which includes their release date, movie rating, synopsis, director, cast, etc.  It even allows the user to write movies reviews, video comments and rate movies. All the new movie trailers and content is made available to users as soon as it is available so that the users never miss out on anything.

Filmy Hero has been featured in over 40 countries by Apple including categories like 'Best New App', 'Made for India' and 'Best Movie Apps'. It has also been featured in top 5 entertainment category in India and ranked among the top 50 free apps in India.

The app displays most popular, top rated and recently updated movies to its users. It even offers Playlists, which is an awesome way to see and play top music videos, top trailers and promos.  It also comes with calendar view which allows the users to see all movies upto a year back and what does the future hold for them.

The app has super stylish and simple interface which makes using the app even more amazing and engaging. Users can also enjoy videos on their TV’s with Apple TV and AirPlay. The app even allows users to email, Facebook, tweet or message their recommendations on these social platforms. The users can also control video playback quality to suit their bandwidth.  The app is fully compatible with all iPhones running iOS 7 or newer versions and iPad support is coming up soon.

Fimly Hero- An app for people high on Bollywood

Is Bollywood in your blood? Then, this app has been designed especially for you.  Filmy Hero is a mobile application that brings its users all the latest Bollywood movie trailers, movie reviews, promotional clips, music videos and much more. All this is made available to users on the go in HD quality and a stunning interface.

The app has so far received awesome reviews from its users and is becoming a big it among Bollywood maniacs. It can be downloaded free of cost by Android and iOS users.

The app comes packed with some amazing features to satisfy all the needs of Bollywood buffs. The app provides the user with every minute detail about each and every movie which includes their release date, movie rating, synopsis, director, cast, etc.  It even allows the user to write movies reviews, video comments and rate movies. All the new movie trailers and content is made available to users as soon as it is available so that the users never miss out on anything.

Filmy Hero has been featured in over 40 countries by Apple including categories like 'Best New App', 'Made for India' and 'Best Movie Apps'. It has also been featured in top 5 entertainment category in India and ranked among the top 50 free apps in India.

The app displays most popular, top rated and recently updated movies to its users. It even offers Playlists, which is an awesome way to see and play top music videos, top trailers and promos.  It also comes with calendar view which allows the users to see all movies upto a year back and what does the future hold for them.

The app has super stylish and simple interface which makes using the app even more amazing and engaging. Users can also enjoy videos on their TV’s with Apple TV and AirPlay. The app even allows users to email, Facebook, tweet or message their recommendations on these social platforms. The users can also control video playback quality to suit their bandwidth.  The app is fully compatible with all iPhones running iOS 7 or newer versions and iPad support is coming up soon.

Krrish Digital Comic Series to be launched by Graphic India

Krrish is a superhero based Bollywood movie series of whom a sequel is soon to be release in coming months and in order to promote the film the producing company of the film - Filmkraft Productions (I) Pvt. Ltd has tied up with Graphic India and announced the launch of an original digital comic series and comic magazine called "Krrish: Menace of the Monkey Men". The company is also set to launch a mobile app based on Krrish 3 movie. [via - MediaNama]

Krrish: Menace of the Monkey Men, will be released as a comic book magazine available in stores later this year and also be converted into an animated mobile comic that will be released as weekly chapters through an exclusive Krrish Comics App, which will be launched by Hungama Digital, Filmkraft Productions (India) Pvt. Ltd digital partner for Krrish 3 - a sequel of Bollywood's superhero movie.

Graphic India is a character entertainment company owned by Liquid Comics which was founded by a known business magnate Sir Richard Branson along with Indian authors and film-makers and the offshoot company focused on creating leading characters, comics and stories for the Indian youth market through mobile and digital platforms.

The digital comic series will be the first one which is based on any Hindi movie script, the company claims that the series is being written and illustrated by legendary comic book creators, Tom De Falco, Ron Frenz and Sal Buscema, who have worked on comic book characters such as Spider-Man, Spider-Girl, Superman, Thor, The Avengers, among others.

Superstar actor and Krrish star, Hrithik Roshan commented, "As we get ready for Krrish 3, I am pleased to announce this bonus never before seen Krrish story from Graphic India, the leader in Comics for India, and Hungama, the first name in digital mobile. We’re working with an international team of comic book superstars so you can experience Krrish in a whole new way."