If dollars appear hard to come by in Hollywood these days, odds are many will find those dollars sent to Bollywood. Joining the parade of corporations flocking to Mumbai’s mega film industry is Hollywood giant Twentieth Century Fox. The U.S. film studio and distributor announced a joint venture with the Star entertainment and media group this week.

Named Fox Star Studios, the new venture will produce Asian-language films for worldwide distribution. India will be the home of the new group’s initial productions, though Fox announced possible expansion into China and Southeast Asia. A board consisting of Fox and Star executives will oversee the venture, it was reported.

Paul Aiello

The joint venture is expected to launch in the next six to nine months, according to Star’s chief executive, Paul Aiello.

“We will be putting together a 50/50 partnership, with 20^th Century Fox, to produce and distribute movies in Asia: local, Bollywood, Greater China, Southeast Asia,” he told reporters at the Asia Media Summit in Hong Kong on Monday.

According to reports, Fox Star Studios will produce in local languages instead of the traditional Hindi-language Bollywood flicks.

While India’s entertainment empire is commonly referred to as Bollywood –- named after India’s movie capital Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay -– there are several satellite film industries that compete with the subcontinent’s version of Hollywood. Fox Star Studios’ venture is expected to help shore up local Bollywood offshoots.

These offshoot film industries are often considered alternates to Bollywood, since they film movies in local languages instead of the nationally spoken Hindi. Just like Bollywood, many of these enclaves have used the Hollywood moniker to label itself. The Telugu-language film industry from the South is dubbed “Tollywood,” while “Punjwood” is aptly named for Punjabi-language films from the North. Not to be undone, the other South Indian movie industry based in Chennai renamed itself “Kollywood.”

Heading the Indian operation of the joint venture will be Star’s corporate development executive Vijay Singh, while former Turner Entertainment executive Vivek Krishnani is expected to handle distribution, marketing, and syndication throughout South Asia.

In keeping with the local theme of the new distribution deal, News Corporation’s top executive, Rupert Murdoch, reportedly announced he would invest $100 million to launch six regional channels, including language-specific programming in Bengali, Marathi, and Gujarati. News Corp announced it officially launched the Bengali-language channel on September 8^th.

While specific details about production or financing targets were not announced, industry experts anticipate Fox Star Studios to release three films before the end of 2008 and ten films in 2009.

In China, Fox Star Studios will likely have a unit based in Hong Kong, where movies will be produced in Mandarin and distributed throughout China, Taiwan, and Singapore. Chinese production may also be produced for Cantonese-speaking populations in Hong Kong and outside Asia.

The joint venture comes four months after News Corp publicly announced its Fox Filmed Entertainment would launch Fox International Products to produce and acquire local language films in India, Russia, Japan, and Germany.

Joint ventures have become commonplace in India, as many large corporations in the United States and Western Europe hope to capitalize on Bollywood’s growing appeal and acceptance in places such as Hollywood, New York, Toronto, and London.

According to the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, which monitors film production in the subcontinent, a total of 1,146 films were produced nationwide in 2007.