EXCLUSIVE: Hot on the heels of launching Netflix police drama Black Warrant, India’s Applause Entertainment has struck a two-picture cope with 83 and Ek Tha Tiger director Kabir Khan.
The pact will see Applause and Kabir Khan Films co-produce a pair of options, with Bollywood blockbuster maker Khan on the helm as director and artistic manufacturing lead on each. No additional particulars of the pics but, however Applause Managing Director Sameer Nair stated the partnership is “fuelled by our mutual love for storytelling.”
“This collaboration with Applause is a natural fit as we both share a passion for stories that resonate with people at their core,” added Khan. “The beauty of this partnership lies in the creative freedom it offers, and I’m thrilled to embark on this exciting journey with Sameer and his incredible team.”
Khan started his directing profession in 2006 with journey thriller Kabul Express, and went on to helm the likes of put up 9/11 racial profiling thriller New York, the primary YRF Spy Universe movie Ek Tha Tiger, comedy-drama Bajrangi Bhaijaan and cricket pic 83. Last yr, he directed biographical sports activities drama Chandu Champion about India’s first Paralympic gold medallist, Murlikant Petkar.
“At Applause, our vision is to collaborate with powerful creative voices to tell stories that are unique, distinctive and popular, and resonate with audiences in meaningful ways,” stated Nair. “We look forward to exciting times ahead with Kabir.”
This deal is a part of a longer-term technique at Aditya Birla Group-backed Applause to construct out a slate of movies. Primarily recognized for TV exhibits and streaming dramas, Nair stated options had change into “a big focus to complement our series slate.”
Pact comes as Applause’s Hindi-language drama collection Black Warrant nestles properly in Netflix’s Global Top 10 non-English exhibits chart after launching on January 10. Along with Paatal Lok Season 2 on Prime Video, it has handed Indian drama collection a powerful begin to 2025 regardless of murmurs available in the market about budgets falling amid streamer conservatism.
Speaking to Deadline, Nair stated Black Warrant had “opened really well and gave Applause a great start to the new year.” It has had a “wonderful reaction from all sorts of people,” he added.
The present, primarily based on Sunil Gupta and Sunetra Choudhury’s 2019 non-fiction e-book ‘Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer’, comes from Vikramaditya Motwane and is about Gupta’s time as a younger jailer on the notorious Tihar Prisons complicated in Delhi. “It’s a piece of contemporary history,” stated Nair, whose firm is thought for delving into India’s previous for exhibits such because the Scam crime franchise and the upcoming Gandhi biopic collection.
Billed as against the law thriller, Black Warrant additionally combines parts of a coming-of-age story for the younger Gupta, performed by Zahan Kapoor, with office comedy tropes added in. “In a way, it’s a coming-of-age story for India, as it traverses the ’80s, the ’90s and the 2000s,” stated Nair. “It’s an enormous expanse of time, and we’ve solely achieved the primary 5 years, so we’ve far to go, with actually attention-grabbing new actors.
Applause, which makes the present alongside Andolan Production and Confluence Media, is hoping for extra seasons for the present, with “many more stories to tell from a good cast of characters” that additionally consists of Rahul Bhat, Paramvir Singh Cheema and Anurag Thakur. “The book has another 25 years of history, and while it will never move from Tihar, it is the story of jailer over the years as different colorful characters come in and out, and the storytelling is not episodic and is more seralized with progression as it goes along.”
The present was developed utilizing Applause’s standard type of buying the IP, financing growth and getting into manufacturing earlier than promoting the completed product to a streamer, on this case Netflix.
While the mega-budgets of the early streaming increase in India look like gone, Applause has managed to bypass the downturn in work by sticking to matters and manufacturing approaches that work for the mass market and retain a sheen of high quality. Nair stated Applause would proceed to observe its enterprise mannequin, regardless of the pitfalls of manufacturing earlier than greenlight, however admitted the most important danger in his strategy was the primary season, when cancellation is probably. “We have made lots of subsequent seasons,” he stated. “The minute the first season is a success, that’s a lot of the work done.”
More broadly, although, he has recognized the temper shift amongst streamers. “The Indian market is changing, like the rest of the world, and a lot of the ultra-premium, super-expensive shows the streamers were making over the last five years will slow down, rightfully so. We were never really in that bracket and have been more reasonable in our expenditure. We’re not in competition with anyone, we just look for what the platforms want.”
He famous that Netflix had been conscious of Black Warrant for a number of years, however the truth Applause might deliver the streamer a bundle tied in a bow truly elevated its probabilities of pick-up. “We did two-and-a-half year of heavy lifting and could bring them a finished product that they could act on quickly. In a sense, we help the process rather than compete.”
Nair, who led Star India for 12 years and helped NBCUniversal launch NDTV in India within the early-to-mid 2000s, stated that the TV market was no kind of tough for producers than it had been when he was on the opposite facet of the desk taking pitches. “There were lots of people who wanted to pitch to me, and couldn’t, but there were lots of people who didn’t know me initially who got a lot of business out of me,” he stated. “There is always going to be struggle in the process and the heartbreak of it all. That’s the business you get into.”
Of extra concern is elevating and attracting capital for productions, he added. “Capital that believes in the creative process and wants to create content that can later be put out theatrically or on TV benefits the industry. That’s how the U.S. used to work, and other places like Britain have worked like that. Within all the creativity, you must never forget the financial responsibilities.”