GLOBAL BEATThe crew of Kahiin to Hoga ("He Will Be Somewhere") is ready to shoot, but the scriptwriters are still arguing about dialogue. The director, 34-year-old Rajeev Bhatia, slumps in his chair in a satiny blue shirt and faded jeans. He puts a microphone next to his Walkman cellphone to fill the studio with the booming rhythms of a Bollywood dance tune.

Bare-chested light crews hang from the ceiling on ropes and planks. A set man uses a rock to hammer a chromatic painting on the lacquer-red wall.

It's after 5 p.m., but they still have to get their star, Gurpreet, on tape storming past the receptionist on his way to an office confrontation.

It is a colorful, chaotic but typical scene at Balaji Telefilms Ltd., the biggest content producer in Bollywood (Hollywood mixed with Mumbai's former name, Bombay).

Millions will click their remotes for STAR Plus, one of India's 300 cable channels, to see how Gurpreet's character handles the news that his ex-girlfriend is pregnant. Millions of others will spend Friday night at the movies, where a $3 ticket at a Mumbai multiplex gives a choice of as many as 10 films full of melodrama, song and dance.

STAR Group, a Hong Kong affiliate of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., bought 21 percent of Balaji last year for $27.3 million. The Cartoon Network, ESPN, MTV and Disney all have Indian cable channels.

Texas Instruments Inc., meanwhile, is helping Indian cinemas convert to digital with its digital light processor (DLP) technology and is pushing the envelope of cellphone processor designs for music and video content.

A study last year by PriceWaterhouseCoopers forecast Indian consumers would spend $18.1 billion by 2009 on entertainment and media. The entertainment landscape is changing so fast that Texas Instruments' India division estimates spending of $10 billion as soon as 2008.

"It's growing at a compounded annual rate of 20 percent," said Bobby Mitra, managing director of Texas Instruments India. "And the distribution model is changing to more and more digital."

TI India specialists have twice met with director Shekar Kapur, whose films include The Bandit Queen, Elizabeth and The Four Feathers. Mr. Kapur, saying "every new technology creates its own art form," is seeking technologies to carry short films on cellphones and other devices.

TI's chips are already in 80 percent of the 65 million cellphones in India. Phones equipped with TI chips able to carry live TV broadcasts go on the market this Christmas in South Korea, and will make their way around the world next year.

The Washington-based International Intellectual Property Alliance estimates U.S. entertainment firms lost $240 million of business in India last year due to pirate copying by organized criminal gangs. The alliance blamed police corruption, lack of resources and overburdened courts.

Bollywood has gotten tangled up with Mumbai's underworld in other ways. Insiders say some films are still made with underworld financial backing. One of India's most wanted gangsters was recently returned here from Portugal to face charges of murder, terrorism and extortion that targeted many of Mumbai's leading actors and filmmakers in the late 1990s.

Bollywood is cleaning up its act. Government decrees allowed banks to finance film projects for the first time in 2001. Sony Entertainment recently signed a deal to produce a Bollywood film, a first in India for an international studio.

"Many cinemas are moving to direct satellite beams of films that are stored on a hard drive," he said. "The content stays there for an agreed number of shows, then self-destructs."

By the end of October, Hughes Network Systems of Germantown, Md., and the Valuable Group of India had such satellite-based digital technology in 400 cinemas. They plan to install it in 2,000 of India's 11,000 cinemas by 2008.

Animation studios both in the United States and elsewhere are taking advantage of India's low-cost software programmers to help with cartoons and video games. PriceWaterhouseCoopers estimated production of a half-hour animated program costs $250,000 to $500,000 in the United States, but only $60,000 in India.

Technology flows the other way as well. Ms. Gokhale said the special effects crew for The Matrix film series is working on a project with an Indian studio.

"Americans can make movies about ants, mice, anything, but we don't have that technical finesse," said Shenazz Nadirshah, Balaji's creative executive producer. "When we make a film like that, it bombs, because Indian audiences don't want to see tacky things."

More than anything else, Ms. Nadirshah said, Indian studios are looking for good stories. Balaji's big summer movie hit, Kya Kool Hai Hum ("How Cool We Are"), was a sex comedy about the adventures of two adolescent guys - "sort of an American Pie, but not as visually appalling," Ms. Nadirshah said.

A co-production of U.S. and Indian filmmakers would mix cultural sensibilities, she said. One example: a remake of Rudyard Kipling's story, The Jungle Book, in a mix of live action and animation akin to Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

"If it's made as a crossover, with technology from the USA, actors from both countries, visual effects from the USA and locations in India, that could work," she said.

Janis Burklund, director of the Dallas Film Commission, would like Indian filmmakers to shoot movies with Dallas in the background, but says they're more likely to come for the production facilities.

Other U.S. locations, from New York to New Mexico, have lured Indian crews. Mr. Bhatia, the soaps director, spent several months in Utah working on a political thriller.

"It was great. We had a half-Indian, half-American crew," he said. "We used the canyons as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and Salt Lake City for New Delhi."

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