We bring you the details of the biggest IIFA ever
GUESS WHAT? THIS time, the much-loved International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) 2017 Awards night is taking place in the city that never sleeps – New York. The city will host the highly anticipated 18th Edition of the IIFA Weekend and Awards ceremony on July 14 and 15. This is the first time the event is being held in NYC.
The extravagant celebration of Indian cinema will be held at the Metlife Stadium (known globally as the Rolls Royce of venues).
Andre Timmins, Director, Wizcraft International and the producer and creator of IIFA told Khaleej Times over the phone that this will be the biggest IIFA event so far. “We will create a collaboration between Bollywood and Hollywood biggies like Netflix, Amazon, etc. We want to make Bollywood more global hence we chose New York as a hosting venue.
“The whole idea is to capitalise on the Hollywood market by getting Amazon and Netflix on board with us. Many people are migrating to Amazon and Netflix internationally. Amazon has done work with Farhan Akhtar, Karan Johar and Prasoon Joshi in the past. I think our stars too will migrate to that space because they have the opportunity to produce good content. New York is the right place for us and we are already getting a great response,” he added.
The IIFA Voting Weekend took place recently in Mumbai where members of the Indian film fraternity showed their support towards IIFA by coming forward to vote for their peers.
Andre told us that the Indian film industry is out to make NYC witness 48 hours of nonstop excitement and entertainment like no other. “From the content perspective, we are doing a lot of collaboration. We are going to bring in the big stars from Indian cinema. There will be music workshops and massive events at Times Square which will be free to the public. We are also expecting many Hollywood celebrities to join us for the star-studded celebration.”
The IIFA weekend has hosted many movie premieres in the past and Andre revealed that this time, quite a few Bollywood films are fighting for space to premiere at the festival.
Over the years, Hollywood celebrities like Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Thora Birch, Kylie Minogue, John Travolta, Hilary Swank and Kevin Spacey have all graced IIFA. Apart from Bollywood bigwigs, South Indian movie industry superstars like Rajinikanth, Nagarjuna, Kamal Haasan are also expected to attend this year’s ceremony.
Tickets for the event go on sale starting April 19.
At IIFA, we do not have a jury. Forms are sent out to various production houses and they send it back to us with details of their movies. We then put those entries out. Dangal did not send an entry. We would love Dangal to part of IIFA. We love Aamir Khan and the new girls who made their debut in the movie. Dangal is a fantastic film. It is sad that the film is not part of IIFA.” Andre Timmins