"I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship" - the Indian and American film industries working together

Collaborations between the two biggest film industries in the world sound like a very natural thing, but Indian cinema has never been taken seriously enough for it to happen.
Attitudes, however, are changing on many levels (also see my post from February).

For one thing - who'd have thought that tabloid stories from Bollywood would be the subject of a comedy show on mainstream American TV? (the story of a supposed fallout between Shahrukh and Big B is quite old now, but still talked about in India - they've both repeatedely said there's no truth in it, Shahrukh of course in his own unique way)

But there are also some much more serious changes. A fairly recent story is that UTV Motion Pictures and 20th Century Fox are co-producing M. Night Shyamalan’s next film - The Happening. India has been in co-productions before now (though AFAIK quite rarely), but this time we're talking about a major blockbuster.
That's not the end of things for UTV either. There's also talk of an international project which would co-star Uma Thurman and Hrithik Roshan.
The Shyamalan film sounds rather awful - toxic plants... er right... But I'm very curious how the situation between the Indian and American industries is going to develop.

Just to finish this post on a totally random note (and get rid of something that has been in my drafts since February or something like that ;-P), here are two funny clips - one from this year's Academy Awards with Ellen Degeneres as the host and one from the Filmfare Awards which are the most important awards in India (and take place around the same time that the Academy Awards do) - this year they were hosted by Shahrukh.
(if you desperately want to have an explanation for the sudden appearance of these two clips in this post then I suggest you assume that this is just a way of showing some similarities and differences between the two industries ;))





P.S. Unlike my dad I don't expect everyone to know the quote in the title of this post (since the film it comes from was made in 1942). It is from Casablanca which incidently might be remade in India.