Red Chillies Entertainment

Films

In 2004, choreographer Farah Khan, a good friend of Khan, decided to direct a film with him. He then took over the production company Dreamz Unlimited which he created with Juhi Chawla and director Aziz Mirza and transformed it into Red Chillies Entertainment with his wife Gauri Khan, who became the producer of the first production Main Hoon Na in which Khan starred as well. The movie did well at the box office, becoming the second highest-grossing film of the year. Khan also starred in the company's 2nd release, the 2005 movie Paheli, belonging to the genre of Indian Parallel Cinema, the film was critically acclaimed and was selected as India's official entry to the 79th Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Language Film category.

The third film produced by the company was Farah Khan's mega-budget Om Shanti Om, which was released in November 2007. The film was set in the 1970s and 2000s and paid tribute to Indian film industry of both these eras. Upon release, it broke many box office records, grossing over ₹ 1.48 billion and thus became the highest-grossing Hindi film of all-time at the time of its release. The 2009 film Billu starring Irrfan Khan and Lara Dutta was the company's next release, the film opened to good reviews, but was a failure at the box office. The film made by Roshan Abbas, Always Kabhi Kabhi, did poorly.

The company continued working on other projects until finally deciding on Ra.One (2011) starring Khan himself, Kareena Kapoor and Arjun Rampal. The pre-production work began in 2007 after the release of Om Shanti Om. The film's crew consisted of more than 5,000 members from India, Italy and the US, and was pieced together by more than 1,000 people, working in shifts, in around 15 studios across the world. It saw the inclusion of several visual effects techniques being incorporated in the production which were carried out by Red Chillies VFX. With an estimated budget of ₹ 1.25 billion, Ra.One was the second-most expensive film ever produced in Indian cinema, and the most expensive Bollywood film. The film witnessed a level of publicity campaigning previously unseen in India films, with marketing taking place over a period of nine months and involving major brand tie-ups of a 52 crore (US$9.88 million) which set the record for the largest marketing budget in India.

The film released across 3,100 screens in India and 904 prints overseas in both 2D and 3D, making it the largest Indian cinematic release in the world. Subsequently, the success of the effects and the 3D version of the film prompted multiple other Bollywood filmmakers to consider technology as a part of film-making, especially in view of the success of Ra.One and the inordinately higher returns generated from 3D ticket sales. The film went on to break multiple box-office records and according to its distributors, is the second highest-grossing Bollywood film worldwide earning over ₹ 2.4 billion. Their next production was Karan Johar's directorial venture, Student of the Year (2012), which was co-produced by Johar's production company.

Visual effects

The company also has a visual effects studio known as Red Chillies VFX which flagged off in 2005. Apart from home productions, the VFX team had been involved with many major movies like Chak De! India, Krrish 3, Don: The Chase Begins Again, Dostana and De Dana Dan. The division has won accolades for its work in India and abroad. Don: The Chase Begins Again won European accolades for Best Special Effects in 2006. A year later, Om Shanti Om won best visual effects from Filmfare, Zee cine, IIFA, Star Screen, Indy's and Apsara Producer's Guild Awards and in 2011, Ra.One swept all major awards in Bollywood for visual effect, including a National Film Award and Filmfare Award for Best Special Effects and was nominated for the Asian Film Award as well. The division has the largest manpower among the group companies with a staff strength of over 130.

The Studio was innvolved in following projects.

Sports

In 2008, Red Chillies acquired ownership rights for the franchise representing Kolkata in the a Twenty20 cricket tournament Indian Premier League, for a price of USD 75.09 million, and have since named the team Kolkata Knight Riders. KKR is the richest team in the IPL and it has been ranked as the most valued with a brand value of $42.1 million. Financially, the KKR are the most profitable and successful franchise in the IPL as well. The home of the Kolkata Knight Riders is Eden Gardens, the largest and most iconic cricket stadium in India. It is also one of the largest stadiums in Asia. In 2011, they introduced the Mumbai franchise in the motorsport racing league i1 Super Series. In 2012 SRK shown his interest to buy 50 percent share of Dempo S.C. Indian football club of I League. He also has the 50% stakes in Caribbean Premier League franchise Trinidad and Tobago Red Steel from 2015 onwards. The team had many popular former players and the current coach of Kolkata Knight Riders, Jacques Kallis and other famous players like Kamran Akmal, Dwayne Bravo, Johan Botha, Darren Bravo and Cameron Delport etc. The team clinched maiden Caribbean Premier League title in 2015 right after Shahrukh Khan becomes the owner of the franchise. He changed the name and logo of the team the very next season and the name given to the franchise is Trinbago Knight Riders and the name and the logo are almost identical to KKR.

Marketing innovation

When it comes to digital and marketing innovations for films, Red Chillies Entertainments Pvt Ltd has always been at the top of the game and known for its digital and marketing innovations and this time as well they have come up with a unique concept for the mobile phone and tablet users for their Diwali release, Happy New Year. It was the first Bollywood film to release its trailer through the free messaging app - Whatsapp. The fans were asked to post their mobile numbers on the official Twitter and Facebook pages of the film, to which SRK, Deepika Padukone, Abhishek Bachchan, Boman Irani, Sonu Sood, Vivaan Shah and Farah Khan sent the trailer personally.

Dilwale (2015 film)

Red Chillies took movie promotions to the next level, with Dilwale. The movie achieved a milestone in its history with many innovations that made Dilwale one of the most successful marketing campaigns ever.

The campaign began with the launch of the trailer which created a history by becoming the most viewed trailer within 24 hours of its release with 7.5 million views. Taking the innovation to a new level, auto tweet technology was used to make personalized tweet replies with the trailer link from Shah Rukh Khan. An association of direct marketing was made with Just Dial as well which helped the users to receive an SMS of the trailer link if they searched for a query. The team at Red Chillies Entertainment utilised the Facebook Live feature with the entire star cast of the team and also had the honour to become the first brand to receive a Facebook mentions account. Red Chillies Entertainment used many cool marketing innovations and one of them was Facebook Prompter, directly targeting the Dilwale fans and SRK. The fans timelines were displayed with the search prompter to watch the movie’s trailer. Apart from this, a Status Prompter was also created that told the user about the film’s release. Not only this, a separate emoticon was created exclusively for the movie to Check In and inform the people in their friend-list that they are watching Dilwale. The emoticon had the D for Dilwale whenever they checked in.

Dilwale also became the first movie as they made the trailer’s parody and a song with Shudh Desi Gaane. There was also an association with TVF and Miss Malini where in SRK and Kajol starred in funny videos, at the same time hinting the theme of the movie in a subtle manner. The entire concept lead to the generation of the shareable content. The star cast was also featured on the platform known as M Bole Toh, by Hotstar. The song JanamJanam was created as Bollywood’s 360-degree video which created the ease of access to the users and enable them to view the song in a 360 degree environment.

Dear Zindagi

At CMO Asia’s Social Media Marketing Awards, Red Chillies Entertainment was awarded the ‘Best Viral Marketing Campaign’ & ‘Best Use Of Social Media In Entertainment Industry’ award for Dear Zindagi’s digital marketing campaign. Instead of a single trailer, Red Chillies released five short teasers to generate curiosity among the audiences. In a never-seen-before marketing move, the makers promoted the movie on Tinder by uploading the protagonist’s profile on the dating app. The film was also widely promoted on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube.

Red Chillies and its digital agency, Flarepath, teamed up with popular content creators like TVF, Culture Machine, ScoopWhoop and Miss Malini to launch innovative promotional videos. The entire campaign garnered 2.6 billion + impressions on social media with a total of 29 Twitter trends in India and worldwide.

Raees (film)

With Raees showcasing Shah Rukh Khan in a different avtar, the innovative marketing campaign as adopted by the Red Chillies Entertainment, deserves special mentions. The social media handles of Raees, along with the Red Chillies Entertainment grabbed the eyeballs with the release of the vines and videos of the making of the legendary scenes from the movie along with songs starring SRK and Mahira together.

To take the campaign one level ahead, the contest of #RaeesWithFamily was promoted along with #RaeesAgain, that gave the opportunity to the SRK fans to make their Raees experience a memorable one.

Plans for the future

Shah Rukh Khan's production banner Red Chillies Entertainments Pvt Ltd., which is reportedly targeting a 25 per cent annual business growth, is set to roll out four to five films and the Bollywood superstar says he won't act in them.

"We want to make four-five films without me. As a producer I would like to concentrate on the films and visual effects," Shah Rukh told IANS in an interview.