KUALA LAMPUR: The “sweet 16th edition of the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) Weekend and Awards — an annual celebration of Bollywood in a foreign land — is being pitched as an amalgam of the glamor, glitz and stardom of Hindi cinema, and a flavor of the culture and hospitality of Malaysia, where the show is returning after 13 years.

When it was last held in Malaysia — in Genting Highlands in 2002 — Wizcraft International Entertainment, the IIFA organizers, were looking at an audience of 6,000. For the forthcoming edition here June 5-7, the estimated audience is 13,000 to 14,000 at the Stadium Putra.

“When we came here in 2002, Malaysia was different, we were different. And now in 2015, Malaysia has changed, we have changed… both of us are better, bigger and larger than life, more organized, more modernized and glamorous…so, it will be a bigger, wonderful and probably more glamorous celebration that you’ll see of IIFA this year,” Sabbas Joseph, director, Wizcraft International Entertainment, the organizers of the mega event, told IANS.

IIFA, an annual event, is a three-day extravaganza, which made its debut at the Millennium Dome in Greenwich, Britain, in 2000. Back then, it was organized with a meagre budget of Rs.2 million. In 2011, Joseph had claimed that the budget of the star-studded extravaganza is at least up by “1,000 percent”, and that scale of the event is now a “little less than 5,000 times”. Naturally, it has grown even more in 2015.

Joseph and Timmins were here with Bollywood stars Anil Kapoor and Bipasha Basu to announce Kuala Lumpur as the host city of the IIFA Weekend and Awards.