Hotstar, Star India’s home-grown digital video platform, has announced the launch of Hotstar Specials, a series of original content featuring some of India’s most well-known story-tellers. Gaurav Banerjee, President and Head - Hindi GEC, Star India tells us more…
WHY HOTSTAR SPECIALS? We are trying to partner with the best story-tellers to try and create something that’s never been attempted before. The Digital format gives us an opportunity to change the rules that we have played by all these years and create content based on what consumers want. Hotstar Specials will be a massive departure for us, in terms of the scale in which stories can be attempted. It can be 4-hour content, 15-hour content or even 25-hour content. The only thing that matters is what is right for the story and what exists in terms of the potential captured by us, and by the story-tellers that we are partnering with.
THE STORY-TELLERS: For the first set of Hotstar Specials, we have partnered with people like Shekhar Kapur, Neeraj Pandey, Kabir Khan, Nikkhil Advani, Ram Madhvani, Venkat Prabhu, Sudhir Mishra, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Nagesh Kukunoor, Mahesh Manjrekar, Vishal Furia, Rohan Sippy, Debbie Rao, Sharad Devarajan and Salman Khan. We have been working with them for the last 6-8 months. We hope to launch the first show in this quarter.
WHAT’S IN STORE: Work by these 15 partners will roll out over the next 15 months, and there will be more. This is not a one-off initiative, but a whole new content foray and we will come up with the right content.
WHY HOTSTAR SPECIALS? We are trying to partner with the best story-tellers to try and create something that’s never been attempted before. The Digital format gives us an opportunity to change the rules that we have played by all these years and create content based on what consumers want. Hotstar Specials will be a massive departure for us, in terms of the scale in which stories can be attempted. It can be 4-hour content, 15-hour content or even 25-hour content. The only thing that matters is what is right for the story and what exists in terms of the potential captured by us, and by the story-tellers that we are partnering with.
THE STORY-TELLERS: For the first set of Hotstar Specials, we have partnered with people like Shekhar Kapur, Neeraj Pandey, Kabir Khan, Nikkhil Advani, Ram Madhvani, Venkat Prabhu, Sudhir Mishra, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Nagesh Kukunoor, Mahesh Manjrekar, Vishal Furia, Rohan Sippy, Debbie Rao, Sharad Devarajan and Salman Khan. We have been working with them for the last 6-8 months. We hope to launch the first show in this quarter.
WHAT’S IN STORE: Work by these 15 partners will roll out over the next 15 months, and there will be more. This is not a one-off initiative, but a whole new content foray and we will come up with the right content.
