Tinsel town starts taking shape in Mysuru as ground work begins

Mysuru: The much-awaited work on the film city on 160 acres of land at Immavu in Nanjangud taluk of the district has kickstarted.

The department of information and public relations (DIPR), which is implementing the project, has initiated the tender process for the detailed project report and also for the project, to be taken up on a public private partnership model. 

In first phase, KIADB (Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board) acquired 110 acres of land. The Public Works Department (PWD) has now taken up work on the compound wall around the land at a cost of Rs 7 crore.

The KIADB has finished acquiring the remaining 50 acres of land and work on the compound around this land too will begin soon, said T K Harish, senior assistant director of DIPR, Mandya, and nodal officer of the project. 

Harish said it was an uncultivated barren land. The Mysuru district administration has cleared compensation for all land holders. 

Officials are planning to make this film city a one-stop destination for film production, with all technical facilities and infrastructure, from studios to final editing. It will have restaurants and other amenities.

The project aims to make the heritage and tourism destination a hub for cinema-making too, by giving opportunities to filmmakers of not just Sandalwood, but to those from other languages too. 

Experts feel this film city should be self sustaining like Ramoji film city (spread over 1,600 acres) and have some permanent sets, theme parks like Disneyland to attract tourists and earn revenue.

They hope that this becomes a proper hub with sound-proof buildings, facilities for re-recording, remixing, editing, digital conversion, animation, graphics and other technical aspects. 

Once a filmmaker enters the city, he or she should be able to come out with a complete cinema, ready for the big screen, they said.

Tourism stakeholders feel that the celebrity footfall and demand for star hotels will increase in Mysuru, once the project is completed. It will provide employment to several skilled and unskilled workers. As Mysuru has many scenic tourist places nearby, filmmakers can make the most of them, they said. 

Officials said the then government of Ramakrishna Hegde proposed the film city for the first time in 1980, at Hesaraghatta in Bengaluru. It was revived in 2004, when S M Krishna was chief minister. It was proposed again in 2017, when Siddaramaiah was the CM.

In 2018, when H D Kumaraswamy was the chief minister, the project was proposed to come up in Ramanagara. Later, in 2019, when B S Yediyurappa was the CM, he planned to have it at Devika Rani Roerich Estate, Bengaluru. It was put forth again by the Siddaramaiah-led government in 2023.

Finally, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah allotted Rs 500 crore for the film city of global standards in the budget for 2025.