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You have recently completed a year at the helm of Zee Studios. How has the first year been?
It has been a very interesting year, full of new learnings. I’ve been a television guy through and through working in various departments from sales to business across languages. I’ve been with the group for 18 years with my last stint at Zee Bangla.
This is a new business and a different animal altogether.
The last year has been a steep learning curve and I am looking forward to some exciting times ahead.
What led to you shifting from television to films?
The shift from television to making content is a natural progression. Zee, as a network, has a very entrepreneurship driven philosophy and the company believed in me to handle this role. I’m grateful to them for the opportunity. It was the same when I shifted to Zee Bangla, I did not know the language or the people.
I stayed in Kolkata for six years and we got a 120 grp channel to 440 grp. Television gave me an opportunity to understand the consumer, now it’s time to use that to get the right content out to them.
What have been the learnings from the first year?
The past 12 months have been a process of learning and unlearning. While television gives you the opportunity to make mistakes and repair them both in content and campaigns, films offer you no such luxury. You have to get it right the first time around and that, I guess, is a very important learning here.
Another important learning here was that audiences have evolved significantly. Some big names did not work last year, while fresh content was a major winner at the box office.
Last year was a successful year for Zee Studios with films like 'MOM', 'Secret Superstar' and 'Qarib Qarib Singlle'. Your experience?
Last year was an interesting year for us. Each film we worked on was from a different genre. 'MOM' was a very touching story with stellar performances by all the actors, but we realised that while audiences want to watch such stories, they don’t want to watch the gruesome parts on screen. They come to theatres to forget their pain. Everyone who saw the film loved it, but a lot of people who wanted to go for the film did not have the courage to do so.
'Secret Superstar' was an experience in itself. With Aamir Khan involved on the project, it is a different kind of learning. He is a film school in himself and there is a lot that you learn from him. He looks at content and audiences with a very unique lens. The film worked brilliantly worldwide, especially in China where it has become a massive hit.
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'Qarib Qarib Singlle' was a mature love story with a certain pace and mellowness to it. Audiences are loving such films and now with digital platforms coming in aggressively, it is allowing makers to experiment with such content.
We also made two Punjabi films this year. 'Saab Bahadar', an experiment with the detective thriller genre in Punjab, worked very well and was appreciated by the Punjabi industry. The second film titled 'Channa Mereya' was the Punjabi remake of our very own Marathi blockbuster 'Sairat'.
What’s the line-up of releases looking like for 2018?
We have a heady mix of films across genres for the coming year. 'Beyond The Clouds', directed by Iranian auteur Majid Majidi, will release on April 20. Then we have 'Tadka' starring Nana Patekar, Taapsee Pannu, Shriya Saran and Ali Fazal. This is followed by 'Dhadak', the Hindi remake of Sairat, on July 20. 'Manikarnika', the story of Rani Jhansi with Kangana Ranaut in the lead role, will release in August. Paltan, which is the story of the 1967 Indo-China conflict, will release on September 7. The film stars Arjun Rampal, Sonu Sood, Gurmeet Choudhary, Harshvardhan Rane, Jacky Shroff, Luv Sinha, along with Esha Gupta, Sonal Chauhan, Monica Gill and Dipika Kakar.
And finally 'Pal Pal Dil Ke Paas', a romantic film, which will mark the debut of Sunny Deol’s son Karan Deol.
Each of these is a different film. With 'Beyond The Clouds', we have an Oscar-nominated Iranian film maker making a Hindi movie without knowing the language.
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Yet he has managed to extract stellar performances from the cast and has captured the essence of Mumbai as never seen before. 'Tadka', I believe, is Nana Patekar’s best performance till date. It’s a love story marking Prakash Raj’s Hindi directorial debut.
Music was the soul of 'Sairat'. With 'Dhadak', we have retained Ajay-Atul to create magic once again for the film in Hindi. 'Manikarnika' is very close to our hearts. Kangana is fantastic in the title role and the movie is going to be a grand affair with spectacular visuals. 'Paltan' is an authentic film, shot with real ammunition and actual soldiers. JP Dutta has poured his heart and soul into this one.
What’s the content strategy over the next few years?
We have identified a few stories at the concept and script stages for the next two years. As for the content and genre mix, we don’t follow any particular genre. It is about what feels correct at that point in time and what story gets the team excited enough to make it. We have identified five projects that we will look at over the next year and a half. These are a mix of large and small projects.
We will start announcing these in the next few months. We are also looking to make movies in the regional space, especially in Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu. We are very open to experimenting with different genres and are constantly exploring for interesting story ideas. You will notice that Zee Studios and the Zee Network at large are getting very aggressive in the movie space. Exciting times ahead!.
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