HB Naveen - Courtesy of Falcon Pictures

HB Naveen can trace his career as a film producer to his childhood. '€œReading a book about Walt Disney when I was young had a great impact in my life,'€ he says.

'€œSoon after I finished reading it, I said to myself that I wanted to work in media for the rest of my life, because all that Walt Disney did was entertain people,'€ the 43-year-old said. '€œThe media world was really my first love.'€

However, Naveen had to take a detour to the silver screen, first working as an advertising account manager and later as a business director for companies such as McCann Erickson, Nuvo Advertising and Hamdan Communication in the 1990s.

From 2000 and 2006, Naveen was the CEO for Bhakti Media '€” directly under patronage of media mogul cum-politician Hary Tanoesoedibjo, who now owns the MNC Group.

Naveen then set up Falcon Interactive in 2006 to focus on new media and information technology and infrastructure.

The firm was quite busy, said Naveen, who was born in Jakarta and completed an executive program in business at Harvard University in the US in 2011. '€œWe invested in Vuclip, a Silicon Valley-based company, which was second-best after YouTube in the mobile platform. But after doing it for some time, at the end of the day, we realized that we needed to produce our own content.'€

Launching Falcon Picture, Naveen bought pay-per-view rights for 300 old Indonesian films, such as the venerable Benyamin Sueb'€™s work to the comedies of the Warkop group.

He'€™s since restored the films, offering the titles on klikfilm.net.

'€œBut those are all old movies, while the audience wants new ones,'€ said Naveen. '€œYou need to have a good embryo '€” this was the thing that made me get into filmmaking. We have the infrastructure and IT to house those films, but we didn'€™t have the content of our own. If we buy films from other producers, the price is too high. So, we started to produce our own films.'€

In the last seven years, Falcon Pictures has produced about two-dozen films, including the action-comedy Comic 8, Coboy Junior: The Movie, Haji Backpacker, La Tahzan, Belenggu (Shackle) and Semesta Mendukung (Universe Conspires).

Comic 8, featuring a relatively inexperienced cast, sold more than 1.6 million tickets during its commercial release last year '€” and garnered for Naveen an Antemas, which he received from President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo during the observation of National Film Day in late March.

High honor: Naveen (right) receives the Antemas award from President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo on National Film Day on March 30 at the Istana in Jakarta. Courtesy of Falcon Pictures

On flops or underperforming pictures, Naveen is phlegmatic. '€œWe also make mistakes. Haji Backpacker, for example, was targeted at young people '€” with all that backpacking stuff, and we produced the film in nine countries.

'€œIn reality, young Indonesians aren'€™t ready yet for the haj pilgrimage. The film turned out attracting older viewers '€” who can relate to the haj pilgrimage theme.'€

The film'€™s target audience wound up watching John R. Leonetti'€™s horror film Anabelle instead.

Looking ahead, Naveen says he wants to make sequels to Comic 8 and My Stupid Boss, which he described as a local-style Devil Wears Prada.

He adds that he would love to adapt two of Pramoedya Anandta Toer'€™s novels for the screen: Bumi Manusia (The Earth of Mankind) and Perburuan (The Fugitive) '€” as well as giving the big-screen treatment to Hans Jaladara'€™s classic comic series Panji Tengkorak.

'€œWe don'€™t have that infrastructure that Hollywood has '€” but we have the mind-set,'€ Naveen says, adding that getting local people to watch local movies remains the problem. '€œWe have to make Indonesian movies the king in their home country.'€

Cameo: Naveen makes a cameo appearance in Haj Backpacker, in a scene shot on location in Iran. Courtesy of Falcon Pictures