It’s no news that showcasing the potential to the global audience has been the biggest silver lining for south India’s regional cinema industries post-pandemic. The streaming platforms too were quick to realise the potential and have taken conscious efforts to invest in regional markets to create rooted, regional content that have the heft to travel beyond boundaries.
The Tamil streaming audience is particularly happy. In fact, Prime Video has stated that Tamil was one of the first languages to get a regional user interface on their platform. Having already witnessed a string of hit films like Soorarai Pottru and Jai Bhim (which are additions to a library of over 500 Tamil films), and original series productions like Suzhal – The Vortex, Vadhandhi – The Fable of Velonie, the Putham Pudhu Kaalai franchise, and the recently-released Modern Love: Chennai, Prime Video has become a major influencer for the Tamil audience.
Amongst the 100 Prime Video originals that are in various stages of development across India, 20 are in Tamil. “We are happy because the Tamil audiences have not only embraced Tamil content on the service, but international content and that too in the original language,” says Prime Video’s Country Director Sushant Sreeram, adding that it’s lovely to see storytellers in the Tamil milieu use the platform as a canvas to tell their stories. “We are honoured but also conscious that we are only getting started,” he adds.
Here are excerpts from the conversation with Sushant ahead of the release of Modern Love: Chennai (MLC):
How important are products like Modern Love to you, especially because we are seeing similar attempts from your competitors as well?
The starting point of a project like this isn’t to create a product, but to share the story. We focus on making good stories that are deeply local but also universal in their themes. MLC is one such endeavour. The entire Modern Love franchise is based on the NYT columns, and after Modern Love: Mumbai and Modern Love: Hyderabad, the Chennai edition felt like a natural extension. A big plus is that it provides the fans of the global franchise an opportunity to dip into familiar but new stories across cultures.
Sushant at the trailer launch of ‘Modern Love: Chennai’ | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
We have been seeing many book-to-screen/game-to-screen adaptations. How important are IPs to you.. because streaming enables all forms of storytelling, making it easier to adapt books or games...
We don’t put the starting point emphasis on IPs. We have many movies that are set in familiar worlds, but when it comes to our series, we back both well-known IPs and unknown stories equally. Our emphasis will be on the story because we have to diversify our stories; there’s no one Indian story to tell, nor is there one Indian customer.
The audiences in the regional markets have their own distinct sensibilities; something that is very obvious when it comes to theatrical releases. How does this come into play while pitching stories to these regional markets?
We are all customers-backed so we are listening to the customers. But a movie like Jai Bhim, which speaks to a specific sensibility, has travelled to over 210 countries and 4000 cities and towns in India. So, the more local we go with storytelling, the bigger the opportunity is. Yes, the customers do influence our decisions; genre, language, the device used to watch, etc are taken into consideration.
Like theatres and television, will OTT ever hit a saturation point because we are now seeing many more streaming platforms coming up? Are there any possible threats to this industry when that happens?
The two-and-a-half years of the pandemic accelerated the growth of OTT and what I look into the future is the opportunity to cater to the entire household while also programing stories to a global audience. We are a land of storytellers; our mythological stories still live amongst us. So I am not concerned about reaching a point of saturation. The 100 local originals currently in production are a sign of the customers’ sheer appetite for entertainment.
About multiple streamers coming up, where I think it will land up is that customers will seek convenience. It’s great that there are so many platforms and customers will value the ability to access them. That’s why we introduced Prime Video Channels in India a couple of years ago.
Sushant with director Bharathiraja, showrunner-director Thiagarajan Kumararaja and the rest of the cast and crew at the trailer launch of ‘Modern Love: Chennai’ | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
How does someone like Modern Love Chennai’s showrunner Thiagarajan Kumararaja gauge how the show has performed after release? What sort of metrics do you use to inform creators on the success or failure of a title?
It’s not about the metrics; it’s about how we engage the creators. I mean, the creators never come to us wanting to know the numbers; they care about the customers’ reactions. We are incredibly transparent on that front; we work closely with our creators. They bring their vision, and we use our experience to bring in what the customers are expecting.
What is Prime Video’s ambition with regional markets, and in particular Tamil cinema?
We have had six originals so far, MLC is the seventh, and we have 20 more local originals in different stages of production. It’s a busy time and we are thankful to the audiences.
