Anil Ambani, the billionaire Indian industrialist, has announced a $1 billion (£511.1 million) foray into Hollywood through a series of deals with A-list film stars including George Clooney, Nicholas Cage, Tom Hanks and Brad Pitt.

It emerged at the Cannes Film Festival that Reliance Big, the entertainment arm of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, which Mr Ambani controls, has forged a number of agreements with production houses in an attempt to become one of the world's largest entertainment conglomerates.

Partners include Mr Cage's Saturn Productions, Jim Carrey's JC 23 Entertainment, Mr Clooney's Smokehouse Productions, Chris Columbus' 1492 pictures, Mr Hanks' Playtone Productions and Mr Pitt's B Entertainment.

Collectively, the deals represent the biggest entry into the western media market by an Indian group and mark a reverse to the flood of money that has been poured into the Indian film industry by Hollywood production houses in recent months.

The move comes as Hollywood faces a potential funding crunch. In the wake of the global credit crisis, equity financing has all but dried up and the major American studios are on the look out for new sources of funding, industry analysts say.

Hollywood's major players are also eager to gain footholds in India, where the media market is forecast to grow by 18 per cent a year between 2007 and 2012, according to a report by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Amit Khanna, the chairman of Big Entertainment, said that about 30 scripts will be generated over the next two years, of which he said he was confident a slate of 10 would go into production.

Mr Khanna said: "These deals alone have the potential of creating a slate of films worth $1 billion."

India is the largest producer of films in the world, with more than 1,100 films released and about 3.7 billion tickets sold every year, more than twice as many as in the next biggest market, the US, according to a recent report by Ernst & Young.

The industry in India achieved a 25 per cent growth in sales last year, compared with 2006, garnering estimated revenues of $2.5 billion. However, tickets are still cheap in India and earnings feeble when compared with the West.

Reliance Big presented its landmark deal as flagging "the reach and potential of India's steadily growing soft power".

However, the group dismissed suggestions it hopes to elbow Hollywood's established production houses to the sidelines. Mr Khanna said: "We are not here to compete. We are here to collaborate. The global film production space is being redefined and we want to be at the forefront."

Several Hollywood players have set their sights on the Indian market. Disney recently increased its stake in UTV, one of Bollywood's leading studios. Sony Pictures released its first Hindi film Saawariya last year. Warner has signed on Indian actors and director for its first Indian venture Made in China, which is scheduled to be released during the Beijing Olympics.

Where the actors involved in Reliance's tie-ups are attached to major Hollywood studios, those studios will be given the right of first refusal for distribution and release of the film, the company said.

"In other cases, we may be co-producers, part-producers or distributors; it will be a different financial model for each film," Mr Khanna added.

In February, George Soros invested $100 million in Reliance's entertainment business, taking a 3 per cent stake in a deal that valued the company at $3 billion. The group is since thought to have held talks with several large investors, including KKR, the US private equity firm and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

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