Bolly-ball Surprise! 'Cloud 9' strikes a chord in India

Here's a surprise. Cloud 9, Frozen Pictures' first feature film release, has become a big hit in India!

Bollywood giants Shemaroo Entertainment released deluxe DVD and VCD versions of the beach volleyball comedy a few weeks ago. And it's caught on partly because it's similar in tone to a Bollywood hit starring Shah Rukh Khan as a disgraced captain of the Indian hockey team who decides to coach a female hockey team:

"The story is much akin to our Bollywood ‘Chak De’. A washed out former star, who is in need of money and an ambition to be fulfilled works towards a get rich plan and starts a volleyball team whose players consist of a group of beautiful athletic strippers. Burt Reynolds efforts in forming the world’s sexiest beach volleyball team with the strippers, is seen as a rib tickling comedy. Eventually though as the girls’ popularity swells, they want to win the crowds with their abilities, and not their bodies where these girls team up and play a match against actual volley ball players."

Cloud 9, of course, was written and produced by Frozen Pictures' Brett Hudson and Burt Kearns, along with Albert S. Ruddy, Oscar®-winning producer of The Godfather and Million Dollar Baby. The India release came with great hoopla, including giveways, contests and other high-profile promotions.

"We were talking about doing a sequel in Australia called 'Cloud 9 Down Under,'" says producer-writer Kearns. "Maybe we'll take the team to India and do 'Bolly-ball'!"

Sez Shemaroo:

"Shemaroo Entertainment has had a superb experience with their first English title release. The wonderful packaging of Cloud 9 drew a lot of attention from the retail shops. Further, Cloud 9 went ahead with exciting activities that were conducted for the first time in Shemaroo. The movie was released on the Friendship Day wherein Café Coffee Day had a special Cloud 9 Combo in their menu card. Anybody on the friendship day who would order a Cloud 9 Combo would get the exclusive movie Merchandise. On that special day all the Coffee Day outlets had a Cloud 9 Table Mat which contained a SMS contest with Phoney Tunes and the winner would stand a chance a win a Gift hamper.

"The movie Cloud 9 has Burt Reynolds as the lead cast and along with other stars like Ex-Miss USA, Kenya Moore and the internationally acclaimed volleyball star–turned-supermodel Gabrielle Reece and supermodel and the former Playboy Playmate, Angie Everhart, the movie Cloud 9 is worth keeping your eyes glued onto."