HYDERABAD: OTT streaming giant Netflix has opened its global VFX hub with the setting up of Eyeline Studios, its global production and innovation studio in India, in the heart of Hyderabad’s IT hub of Hitech City.The facility, Eyeline’s fifth global location after Los Angeles, Vancouver, Seoul and London, puts Hyderabad on the global animation, visual effects, gaming and comics (AVGC) map and signals Netflix’s growing interest and long-term investment in India’s fast-growing AVGC sector.The new facility, spread across 32,000 square feet, is equipped with advanced visual effects and generative virtual effects technology supported by hybrid cloud infrastructure.Netflix said the Hyderabad office will serve as a fully integrated part of Eyeline’s global network and support high-end visual storytelling for productions around the world.Netflix said the move aligns with its broader strategy to expand production innovation infrastructure globally while positioning India as a key node in international production pipelines.The company said it plans to hire specialized VFX talent from India as it builds what it described as a next-generation visual effects and production innovation facility.Telangana chief minister A Revanth Reddy said Hyderabad was a natural home for Netflix and Eyeline, and described the city as a place where creativity, technology and global talent converge. He said the partnership would strengthen Hyderabad’s standing as a hub for film, technology and the AVGC industry.He also invited Netflix to set up its India corporate headquarters at Future City where he said they would be allotted bigger space. “Telangana is rising. Telangana means business,” he said.IT & industries minister D Sridhar Babu said Netflix’s presence in Hyderabad would expand opportunities for local creators and professionals while integrating the city more deeply into the global production ecosystem.“With world-class production standards, advanced creative tools and innovation-driven workflows becoming part of the local ecosystem, young professionals in Telangana will gain access to future-ready skills and global opportunities,” he said, inviting Netflix representatives to collaborate with Telangana govt for building industry aligned talent pipelines through the Young India Skills University.He said with the new Eyeline Studios facility, Hyderabad will become the numero uno storytelling hub on the globe.Sanjay Jaju, secretary, ministry of information & broadcasting, said Hyderabad had a strong history in AVGC and pointed out that several major Hollywood studios already have a presence in the city and the Indian Institute of Creative Technologies, which was set up in Mumbai last year, will soon have a regional campus in Hyderabad.He said Hyderabad houses a huge AVGC industry here with a bulk of the pan-India and multi-lingual films being made here. “The presence of Netflix and Eyeline will being in a lot more content here and will help create a complete diverse ecosystem of not just talent, technology pipeline but a lot of content were as well,” he added.Eyeline Studios CEO Jeff Shapiro said India has long played a defining role in global visual effects because of the scale and depth of talent and said for them Hyderabad stood out for its technology backbone, engineering capability and film culture, making it an ideal base for long-term capability building.Actor-producer Rana Daggubati said Hyderabad’s creative ecosystem had evolved dramatically over the past two decades and the arrival of Eyeline Studios marks another major step in the city’s rise as a future hub for artists, filmmakers and storytellers.
