Unbridled stories on the web

With well known names in the Telugu film industry coming up with web series, the digital space is poised for exciting times

September 02, 2017 03:47 pm | Updated 07:47 pm IST

CHENNAI TAMILNADU 27/07/2017 Actor Rana Daggubati PHOTO L_SRINIVASAN

CHENNAI TAMILNADU 27/07/2017 Actor Rana Daggubati PHOTO L_SRINIVASAN

The team of Social unveiled its first trailer on Saturday. The Hindi-Telugu web series backed by Viu India focuses on cyber crime and stars Rana Daggubati, Naveen Kasturia, Priya Banerjee and Moin among others and is directed by Shashi Sudigala. The first two episodes of Social will be available for download on Viu app on September 8.

The trailer gives an insight into the crime drama and underlines the threat of cyber crime, raising questions of safety in cyber space. In this series, Naveen Kasturia plays a guy in his 30s, working as a security strategist at an banking software company. His sister is missing and as he and his friends did deeper, they unravel a larger conspiracy involving a social media firm.

The entry into web series which began sometime last year for the Telugu industry and is poised to get bigger, with more filmmakers eager to narrate newer stories in the digital platform, where there are no box office constraints.

Front runners

Viu India, Annapurna Studios and Tamada Media came together to present two web series — PillA by Pavan Sadineni and Pelli Gola by Mallik Ram this summer. Pavan Sadineni and Mallik Ram are feature film directors who tested the digital medium to explore new genres. PillA , in particular, got noticed for its finesse in production and the romantic-comedy-meets-thriller format.

Starring Dhanya Balakrishna and Anirudh Thotapalli, PillA had a crew that worked with Sadineni in his films. “There are no boundaries of distribution in the digital medium,” he says. The series began with an idea — what if a girl looking for a way out of an arranged marriage comes up with a shocker that she’s pregnant.

As the story progresses, her lie turns out to be true, but she doesn’t know who’s responsible for it. Working for a web series for a new experience, says the director: “We weren’t used to working towards a weekly, episodic deadline. But I am glad I did PillA , because we’re observing how Netflix and Amazon Prime have ushered in new content.”

Earlier this year, actor Sai Dharam Tej played himself in a cameo in Chai Bisket’s Nenu Mee Kalyan .

More key players

Producer Swapna Dutt is another new entrant to the web series space. Her yet untitled web series for Yupp TV has director Nandini Reddy as creative head in addition to credits for story and screenplay, and the series will be directed by Shashank Yeleti. This series will star Tejaswi Madiwada, Navdeep and Arun Adith.

When Nandini talks about the scope for writing in the digital space, she says it’s “a Star Trek for writing”. Nandini, known for her slice-of-life romantic comedies, says this series will be in a similar genre, but radically different from that of her films. “Telugu television has primarily semi-rural and rural audience today. The urban audience that’s looking for something new finds it on Netflix and Amazon Prime,” she says.

With A-listers entering the fray, will it make it tougher for new players? Nandini avers, “We didn’t know anyone from Game of Thrones prior to the series. Similarly, Netflix’s The Crown and Black Mirror , among others, are content-driven. If a star is a part of a web series, it will get attention. But the attention will fade away without good content. It takes a second for anyone to move away on a phone or a tablet.”

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