Reliance Big Entertainment, the movie unit of India's Reliance ADA Group, will supply around $550 million in equity funding to Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks studios as part of a joint venture deal.
JPMorgan Securities is heading a bank syndication to raise around $700m.
'The figures are still somewhat approximate,' a source close to the deal said.
The money will be used to hive off DreamWorks from Viacom's Paramount, which purchased the studio for $1.6bn in 2006, and turn it into a private company.
The marriage between the top Hollywood studio and the leading Indian company comes as the US entertainment industry looks further afield for cash as the US credit crisis dries up traditional Wall Street and other funding sources.
'Going into the international arena is the next logical step forward for Reliance ADAG. It has entertainment as one of its core drivers,' the source said.
The joint venture will start up by January and make up to 35 movies over five years, the source said.
Indian billionaire industrialist Anil Ambani met Spielberg in Los Angeles to finalise details of the new film company which will be headed by current Dreamworks chief executive Stacey Snider. Snider was chairman of Universal Studios until 2006.
'The 50:50 joint venture, which will target global audiences, will be launched by January and will produce 30 to 35 films over the next five years, the source said, valuing the deal at $1.5 billion.
'The two sides still have to wrap up the modalities, the exact quantum of the finance, the exact number of movies... but the deal is happening,' the source said.
A formal agreement establishing 49-year-old Ambani's status as an international force in movie financing could come next month.
The tie-up with Spielberg, the highest-grossing film director, raises the Mumbai-based telecommunications-to-energy group's global profile in the entertainment industry, into which it has been muscling at high speed.
The deal also allows Spielberg to part company with Paramount Pictures, with which the director's relations have been strained.