Sky to show Bollywood films online

A new service has launched for Sky Digital customers offering over 150 World Cinema titles.

SBO World will be an online on-demand service, part of Sky Anytime.

The service will be split into four sections:

Bollywood – the best in recent and classic Bollywood, including titles such as ‘Zinda’ – the Bollywood remake of ‘Oldboy’ with stars Sanjay Dutt and Lara Dutta, and ‘Eklavya’, an epic period thriller with Indian legend Amitabh Bachchan.

Cinema Europa – quality titles from across Europe. Films at launch include La Belle et la Bete, the hugely influential Cocteau re-telling of the classic tale, Paul Verhoeven’s Bafta-nominated Black Book, and recent thriller, Them.

Eastern Action – a fantastic collection of action movies from the Far East – from John Woo’s Vietnam war epic, Bullet in the Head, to the kung-fu classics that make Jackie Chan a star – Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow and Drunken Master.

World Festival Hits- some of the most celebrated World Cinema hits of all time. These are the films that have taken film festivals by storm, ranging from Palme D’Or winning Iranian drama, A Taste of Cherry, to The Sun – Alexander Sokurov’s biopic of Emperor Hirohito.

Ian Lewis, Director of Sky Movies and SBO said, “SBO World has been designed to super-serve our world cinema audience, with many titles not available anywhere else in the UK – not even on DVD. We expect the number of exclusive titles to grow significantly over the coming months as we pro-actively look to secure further deals that will appeal to this relatively small but important audience. SBO World is therefore a significant addition to Sky’s movie offering, and underlines our position as the complete movies service.”

The transactional service will be available to all Sky Digital subscribers who have access to the Sky Anytime on PC application, and all titles will cost �3.95.

A Sky source confirmed that there are no plans to launch SBO World on its own EPG slot.