Veteran film distributor Sreyashii Sengupta has been appointed Southeast Asia CEO for Continental Entertainment, a new Singapore-based film marketing and distribution firm.
The firm was registered in January and is controlled by Shibasish Sarkar, former group CEO of Reliance Entertainment and chairman of NASDAQ-listed SPAC company International Media Acquisition Corp (IMAQ).
Continental recently handled its first theatrical release, the Singapore distribution of Reliance Entertainment’s Akshay Kumar-starring “Sooryavanshi.” The crime action film which played in the Diwali holiday frame was one of the first Bollywood blockbusters to set a theatrical course following the easing of the COVID-19 pandemic and the reopening of cinemas in India.
Continental also handled the non-theatrical syndication of another Reliance Entertainment film, the 2021 Dhanush-starring Tamil language action thriller film “Jagame Thandhiram.”
Sengupta heads Darpan Global, a Singapore-based producer and distributor. Over a 15-year span, she has been involved in distributing and screening close to 95 movies across various genres and languages, ranging from arthouse to commercial titles. She will remain active in production through Darpan.
Sengupta plans for Continental to aggregate and distribute content other than Indian titles. She expects to involve the company in cross-border collaborations within Southeast Asia and worldwide, and eventually in production. At next week’s Asian Television Forum she will be seeking to acquire films for multi-territory release within Southeast Asia, she told Variety.
Sengupta is also an ambassador of the Asian Academy Creative Awards, supported by The Infocomm and Media Development Authority (IMDA) Singapore, for the territories of India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Cambodia.
“I have had the pleasure of working with Sreyashii Sengupta right from the time she started the first-ever Indian film festival in Singapore. She possesses rich experience, vast knowledge and is a veteran distributor in the Southeast Asian market and we are very happy to have Sreyashii on board,” said Sarkar, in a statement.
“For an association that goes back many years Shibasish’s trust in me to lead the business in Southeast Asia towards a common vision is exciting and rewarding. I look forward to the road ahead as a team where we all move forward together. And when that happens success takes care of itself,” said Sengupta.