Had good match practice, looking forward to future: Sameer Nair on 5 yrs of Applause Entertainment

New Delhi: With a bona fide hit series like "Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story", Bollywood superstar Ajay Devgn's OTT debut "Rudra: The Edge of Darkness", and the glorious run of Aparna Sen's film "The Rapist" in the festival circuit, the first five years of Applause Entertainment have been more than eventful.

As the content studio enters its sixth year in the media and entertainment sector on Tuesday, Applause CEO Sameer Nair says the company has made "good progress" so far championing storytelling over stars.

Over the next few years, the Mumbai-based banner plans to invest "Rs 3,000-4,000 crore in a combination of reinvestment and investment" as it diversifies into films and other avenues.

"I'm super excited because I think we've made good progress. We've managed to sort of improve on and build our hub-and-spoke model of how we work, between us as Applause and our partners. We've had a good match practice. So, we've got a lot of learnings, commercial, creative, legal, negotiations, contracting, etc. I'm looking forward to the future," Nair told PTI in an interview here.

As the world shrinks more with the arrival of 5G cellular technology, the studio is hoping to play a significant role in this large universe connected through streamers, added the industry veteran.

"The market size is going to grow dramatically. We've got 20 million subscribers now. The potential for this (OTT) market is 200 million. 5G is going to come, the streaming world globally is going to be connected more. If Netflix reaches 200 million, which is about a billion people globally, this could get to 3 billion people globally.

"It's only the start of streaming. We're looking to be a significant part in this large universe. The opportunity to create better, different content, to do global collaborations, to do more local content that can travel globally, all of this is going to become reality." Going forward, the stable will be bringing out the second season in the "Scam" series titled "Scam 2003: The Telgi Story", adapted from the Hindi book "Reporter ki Diary" authored by Sanjay Singh; "Gandhi" series, based on Ramchandra Guha's books on the Father of the Nation, directed by Hansal Mehta and featuring his "Scam 1992" breakout star Pratik Gandhi; "Tanaav", an Indian adaptation of Israeli hit series "Fauda"; and the Indian adaptation of "The Fall".

The new season of "Criminal Justice" titled "Adhura Sach", produced by Applause in association with BBC Studios India, is already set to premiere on August 26. The Hindi show is an adaptation of the British series "Criminal Justice".

It will see Pankaj Tripathi reprise the role of lawyer Madhav Mishra for the third time, a rare achievement for a character in the Indian OTT space, Nair said.

"The next one to follow will be Manoj Bajpayee and 'The Family Man' season three. We are quite proud about that because the original 'Criminal Justice' did two seasons with different stories, the Americans did just one - 'The Night Of'. So, 'Criminal Justice' season three is an original story created within the same format." According to Nair, story and storytelling are the most important elements needed for content at a basic level.

"You may or may not have stars, an expensive scale, exotic locations. It may be realistic, but when it (project) succeeds, it succeeds because of the story. Everything around it becomes the halo effect." The senior executive said the structure of Applause -- a media, content & IP creation studio - promoted by Aditya Birla Group -- allows the company to make content by "investing time, effort, money, and risk" and show it to platforms who decide if they want to select the project for viewing or not.

The studio is making things simpler for streamers and contributing towards their growth, he said.

Subsequent seasons are being worked out for Devgn's "Rudra" along with "an origin story", said Nair, adding he would love to see "The Office", an adaptation of the original BBC series of the same name, return for chapter three.

However, "Call My Agent: Bollywood", based on the popular French TV series, will not come back.

From shows, films, animation to documentaries, the idea is to grow Applause into a banner that does all kinds of content and collaborations, he said.

"We did series, now we're doing movies. In fact, we've made quite a few movies they'll all be releasing shortly," added Nair.

"Aparna's movie has done really well for us and continues to get a lot of love," he said about "The Rapist" which won the Kim Jiseok Award at the 2021 Busan International Film Festival and recently won Sen the best director trophy at the 2022 Indian Film Festival of Melbourne.

The first set of movies was about picking up on high concept, thought provoking, and quirky titles, he said.

"As we expand the slide, we will do more mainstream things. We are looking at the theatrical market seriously. We're doing animation, some documentaries. We are looking to do co-productions with other studios." Although Hindi content dominates Applause's filmography, the studio has backed Tamil series "Iru Dhuravam", "Kuruthi Kalam" and "Vadham", and "Humble Politiciann Nograj" (Kannada).

"We're doing a lot of south Indian language stuff. Now, we want to add Bengali to it," said Nair.

Features in the pipeline are untitled film with Nandita Das, Kapil Sharma and Shahana Goswami; a movie with Vidya Balan, Pratik Gandhi, Sendhil Ramamurthy and Ileana D'cruz; Saurabh Shukla's adaptation of his play "Jab Khuli Kitaab" with Pankaj Kapur and Dimple Kapadia; a film based on Twinkle Khanna's short story "Salaam Noni Appa" also starring Kapadia; and Tahira Kashyap's feature directorial debut "Sharmajee Ki Beti".

Content created by Applause is for the entire country and then for the whole world, said Nair.

"The focus is on storytelling, trying to evolve faster than your audience," he said.