DNEG Magnate Namit Malhotra On Navigating Hollywood, Success Of ‘The Garfield Movie’ & Controversy Around Employee ‘Loan’ Scheme

Columbia Pictures/Prime Focus Studios/Matteo Graia/Peacock

EXCLUSIVE: You might not be familiar with Namit Malhotra’s name, but the world certainly knows his work. Malhotra founded Indian production services company Prime Focus Technologies in 1997, and is currently CEO of VFX company DNEG, which has won seven Academy Awards for films such Inception,Interstellar, Blade Runner 2049, and Dune. Hailing from a filmmaking family in India’s Mumbai, Malhotra holds immense influence in both Hollywood and Bollywood, where he is currently in production on Nitesh Tiwari’s Ramayana. The hotly-anticipated feature will feature a score collaboration between A.R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire) and Hans Zimmer (Lion King, Dune). Malhotra, a services exec by trade, is also upping his producer game. He produced the recent Garfield movie, which crossed $200M at the box office this month, was an exec on Hindi-language film Brahmāstra: Part One – Shiva and has exec producer credits on Peacock’s upcoming Rome epic Those About to Die, Legendary’s animation/live-action hybrid Animal Friends and The Angry Birds Movie 3. Here, he chats to Deadline about his cross-continental journey, the impact of the pandemic, layoffs at his company, and future projects in the pipeline. 

DEADLINE: You have your fingers in so many pies globally – from winning multiple Oscars to being involved with Garfield, Angry Birds, Brahmastra and Ramayana among others. How did you reach this position in two of the biggest film industries in the world?

NM: We actually started out in my father’s garage, about three minutes from this office [in Mumbai]. My grandfather [M.N. Malhotra] was a very eminent cinematographer of his time. He worked on India’s first colour film Jhansi Ki Rani in the 1950s, under Ernest Haller who won the Oscar for Gone With the Wind. A very key influence in my life was to see how he innovated and pushed the quality of filmmaking in the country. My father [Naresh Malhotra] was also a producer, so I grew up attending premieres and award shows. I used to joke that I was probably conceived around a film set somewhere in the world. 

As a teenager, my father encouraged me to pursue computer graphics. I couldn’t draw to save my life, so I said no. Then I saw Jurassic Park in 1993. I walked out of the theatre, thinking, forget how they made it – how did they even think about that? It completely blew my mind. 

When I was 18, I had a grand idea to bring Star TV to India. I bought my first suit and a pair of fake glasses, and went to Hong Kong to pitch it. There was interest but my dad said he wouldn’t put in any money, so that plan failed. On the way back I mentioned to a co-passenger on the flight that I wanted to be a filmmaker but my dad wanted me to do computer graphics. He said, “But that’s basically the same thing, right? One you’re doing physically, and the other you’re doing digitally.” That stuck with me, and after taking a six-week computer graphics course, three of us started Prime Focus Solutions in my father’s garage. 

DEADLINE: And how did you get to Hollywood?

The interesting thing about my journey is that even though we’ve done things at a pretty fast pace, relatively speaking, we’ve done it without any shortcuts. We absolutely started the bare bones of TV, then became the best in TV. Then we went to the bare bones of advertising, then filmmaking, then Hollywood and always scaled up. We never had that big break, which I think is good because you kind of get to really practise and learn how good you are. You don’t want to just land in the Olympic final straight away. You want to go through a journey before you participate, but fortunately we kept going.

From 1995 to 2005 we established ourselves in India, and then I thought, ‘Are we any good for the world?’ We listed our company, bought businesses in the UK, Canada and the U.S. and built a global network of studios. I thought, how could it be that my grandfather was collaborating with top American talent in the 1950s and years later, Hollywood and the Indian film industries have not really collaborated [since]? We are the one of the oldest film industries of the world. I tried to take that upon myself to say I would build that bridge from East to West. 

I don’t believe in outsourcing. There is a tendency to think that India would be cheap for production, but my pitch is not about doing it for cheap, it’s about adding more value. Because ultimately, filmmakers don’t want cheap quality work for a cheap price. They want the highest quality never seen before with visual effects and storytelling, in a way that can excite their audience. I believe that’s where most of our competitors got it wrong, because they did not understand the psychology of the film. They kept thinking about doing it cheaper, faster and not thinking about what is the need for that film? What is the need for that project? How do I build a bridge? 

DEADLINE: What difficulties did you face in fostering collaboration between Hollywood and your Indian company? 

It was incredibly hard to get people to trust us. While Hollywood is obviously the Mecca of filmmaking, filmmakers generally are very insecure about creative translation. They don’t trust anybody, and like to collaborate again and again with the same people if they can. The timing of us entering Hollywood was terrible though, because 2007 was the year of the first writers’ strike. Then the Lehman Brothers crisis happened. I walked into Hollywood and everything fell apart. At the time, if you went to someone and said, “Trust me,” all they were thinking about was how many jobs were getting cancelled. Nobody was willing to take risks. My reason to come to America was not to get rich — I was already rich when I came there. I joke that my story is the opposite of the American Dream because I came to America and lost everything. It was more about testing my capabilities beyond India and figuring out if we could be relevant in the world? That was my aspiration.

We pivoted to becoming a 3D company, and worked on Avatar, Clash of the Titans, Harry Potter and Gravity. The trust was coming slowly but surely. In 2014, we acquired DNEG and have since become the Oscar favourite for VFX.

DEADLINE: How did your company navigate the pandemic period and the years after that? 

By 2019, we were the biggest company in the in the world in visual effects — the most number of employees, most Oscars, most studios, most profitable. Then the pandemic hit. After the pandemic we came back and did very well, and then the strike happened. Suddenly, no content was being made and the industry got shut down. No new scripts had been written. Actors couldn’t promote their movies. We had to really pivot the capacity and scale of what we built, which is where our own productions like Garfield, Animal Friends and Ramayana have been massively handy because you’re relying on yourself. Animation was not impacted by the writers strike, so we were able to keep ourselves busy. It’s absolutely nerve rattling stuff, but that is where I realized that we can’t be that size and that scale and be so vulnerable to realities that we can’t control. I’ve got thousands of people on payroll. How do I manage their lives? We had to find our own solution to keep people gainfully employed through that time.

DEADLINE: Do you think experiencing the instability of the first writers’ strike as a bystander gave you more empathy the second time round, this time as an employer?

In 2007, the strikes got called off when the economic crash happened. Everyone was like, “What are we arguing about when the whole financial ecosystem has broken?” This time, the Ukraine war broke out, the U.S. capital markets started to be affected big time, share prices of big media companies fell, a couple of big mergers happened. At that point in time, when the markets were against you, the writers went on strike. The strike ideally should have happened in 2020, when the boom happened. You’re asking for more for more money when the industry is going through a down phase. It’s a bit of a timing mismatch. Asking for your dues or asking for a fair appraisal is great, but everybody is losing money and you say you want more money. Nobody’s benefited from the strikes. Thousands of people around the world are sitting jobless, and productions have been delayed. It’s been pretty hard. 

DEADLINE: What happened with the controversial ‘loan scheme’ that was offered to the employees? As we reported back in September 2023, many were upset with how it was communicated and whether they had a choice to reject it.

We came up with what I think was a very innovative plan to reduce the impact on people’s lives. Because of our global structure and operating framework, the natural tendency is to just cut people across the board. We decided to create a framework in which we could get people to take a pay cut but actually help make up for some of that by offering up a financial assistance programme for certain families and people that couldn’t be on pay cuts. But everything got miscommunicated as if we were forcing people to take a loan. I’m in the middle of a crisis. Why would I give you a loan? I’m borrowing money to lend you money. It makes no sense. We live in a world where misunderstanding is more fun than understanding the positive effort, which is fine. At the end of the day we were not trying to do anything wrong. We were borrowing money to make people’s lives better. 

That’s also where culturally we are divided. People in India would happily rather take the pay cut and keep their life going. People in the West were saying, ‘Listen, if it’s not working, just sack them.’ Every company had layoffs. We were trying to be a little bit more thoughtful, which was bringing more pushback. First of all, we didn’t do anything wrong. We didn’t force anything on anyone; It’s not our place. The people who took it, if you ask them, will say it’s the best thing the company ever did. The people who didn’t take it, I still believe our people didn’t understand it. Sixty-five percent of the people took it. Nobody will talk about that part in the media. It is what it is, but we’re still standing. Most people are still happy to work with us because they’ve appreciated what we’ve done for them. We still delivered Dune 2, Oppenheimer and some of our best projects. Everybody’s seen our quality of work, so I don’t know the point. It’s noise. 

DEADLINE: Now that the strike is over and things are slowly coming back to normal, will the cuts stop? Will you hire more people? 

No, I think it’s hard to say that because we are still right-sizing the company for what we are dealing with. Production has still not started as fully as one would have thought. People have not understood that just because the strike is over doesn’t mean the scripts are ready and and you can start shooting. The 6-8 months of shutdown has taken its toll for almost a year. The financial reality of the world is still pretty hard, and it’s not easy sailing as yet. The industry will hopefully bounce back by the end of the year, as soon as the world goes back into full production. Clearly [there will be] no more assistance schemes, that’s for sure. 

You’ve been stepping into more into producer roles, like with Garfield and Ramayana.

Yes, we’re trying to take up more of a leadership position going forward. I’ve tried to analyze it many times – could I have averted the pandemic or the strikes? No. The year before the strikes was our best year ever. The only answer is to be more in control of our destiny, so the transition to producing our own content is driven by the ultimate desire not just to be a filmmaker but also to protect this thing we’ve built over the last 25-30 years — to steady the ship from a volatility standpoint.

DEADLINE: So what projects do you have in the pipeline, and how involved are you in them?

It’s varying degrees of involvement with every project. Garfield is out already and doing pretty well. With that movie we actually created the whole film with the animation studio, so every frame in Garfield is our work. Production marketing is more or less handled by Alcon Entertainment. We’re filming Ramayana, which will be a global production unlike any other. We’ve begun production on Angry Birds 3 with Rovio and SEGA. Along with the animation, we’re co-financing, investing and producing that, and it’ll be out by around 2026. Legendary has partnered with us on Animal Friends, which is in production and will release next year. We are also financing and providing virtual production and visual effects for Those About to Die, so we have a few things bubbling along.

There’s no specific pattern. In some places it’s about understanding the economics, in others it’s becoming a creative and financial enabler, and with some you actually becoming the driving force of what is happening – like Brahmastra or Ramayana. 

DEADLINE: Did you expect Garfield to do so well? Will we be getting a sequel?

We were always very hopeful about Garfield. The fact that, we attempted something that’s a little away from the traditional structure of high end, expensive movie-making — still high-end but not so expensive — builds a lot of conviction. The markets are always there, it’s just that people want something different. When the money and the stakes are high, you want to go for the most predictable packaging, but audiences get fatigued. That whole art-versus-commerce logic is always in contention because of that. Some things work well – Spiderman is a great example of something that works well in every generation. It’s less about the subject than it is about the idea. Garfield is a character I know and have heard of, but what is Garfield going to do that’s different? 

It’s early to confirm a sequel, but if the numbers continue to stay strong, why wouldn’t we? We’re all excited about seeing Garfield become a new character in people’s lives. Now that I’ve said it to you, I’ll make sure that everybody else on our partnership team understands that I want to make that point without question – it must be better and different than the first so we give audiences a reason to feel enthused about it again. The box office is a very weak measure of all that passion and heart that you put into a project. Of course, a lot of people watch it in the theatre, but I also feel a lot of filmmakers get it wrong. We’re not asking for ten dollars for a ticket, we’re asking for two or three hours of your time. Am I delivering value for three hours of your life? When you think of it like that, I feel I have a slightly higher purpose.

DEADLINE: What is next for Prime Focus and DNEG?

Along with content creation, the use of our tech has also become more and more relevant. AI enabling a lot of content creation and creative storytelling is on the cards, and we’ve got a big belief in that. We have always been a company that’s been leading a lot of new tech initiatives, internally and for our clients. We don’t publicise that, but there’s a lot of internal tech that we’ve relied upon without which we wouldn’t be winning these Oscars. We’re putting a lot of our time and resource furthering not just our own IP in terms of content, but also in terms of our technology stack, which I believe is going to be the real driver and differentiator for us. I have constantly tried to derisk my business plan and play a diversified strategy, which is why I think we’ve been more sustainable than most of our competitors.

DEADLINE: And is there a personal vision you are working towards?

There was a time when nobody believed in India, and if you see the end credits of any of the biggest movies today, we’re all over it. In my mind, I was the enabler of that belief — that India and Indians can do it, that we’ve raised the flag of Indian storytelling to the world. It’s not just for my company. Even if it’s my competitor and they’ve got Indian names attached, it’s a big deal. 

I have a quote by [Formula One racer] Ayrton Senna in my office, ‘Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose.’ Pick any sport. How often do you get to say you’re the best in the world? So for me, that aspiration or that achievement goes beyond everything else. You feel like you’ve actually helped do something that is a little bit more meaningful than just making some money. There are rewards you get for doing great work, but I do not count my success in terms of money or Oscars. Personally, I can make more money with a Garfield or an Angry Birds than a Ramayana, but I will not have that cultural influence of being able to show the world something I believe in so strongly.

We began as a debt-funded startup by a bunch of kids with no training, and the first 50 employees had zero experience. We didn’t know anything, had no real understanding of the medium or the technology, no credibility, no money and we’re here today. That’s the fun, going from nothing to something, which is the story of filmmaking, by the way. The biggest American films are all about the underdog rising up against a set of extraordinary circumstances. That does not happen because you’re chasing money. You’re chasing fame. You have to come from a place of aspiration.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for clarity.