OTT platforms: ‘Books, movies & series thrive together’

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, September 18

With increasing consumption of content on OTT platforms, more and more books are being turned into screenplays as digital content producers turn to be bestselling stories.

Making audience privy to the process, the Majha House invited four well-known names from publishing and production industry who spoke on the subject, ‘Books to Screen’.

Rahul Kumar Tewary, Tanusri Dasgupta and Arcopol Chaudhuri, joined Preeti Gill, founder of the Majha House, to talk about how stories were being adapted for screen in different formats.

Talking about how a decision is taken about which book to choose for a movie, Chaudhuri said it all depends upon how well a book is written, and how visual the narrative is. “There are many people involved today in developing a bridge between Delhi and Mumbai as most of the publishing houses are in Delhi while the movie industry is in Mumbai. We are all involved in creating an ecosystem where books, movies and series thrive together,” he said.

Sidharth Jain, founder of India’s first story company ‘The Story Ink’ said, “We always set to look upon bestsellers and big names for adapting into movies but self-published books written in regional languages are also great for this process as they come all ready with apt dialogue and identifiable situations. It reduces our work to a large extent.”

Tanusri Dasgupta, executive vice-president and content head, Balaji Telefilms, said, “Books and stories are very close to writers and when you select a book for a movie a lot of things get left out on the editing table. Sometimes, this does not go well with authors and with the coming of OTT, this reluctance has gone down. Since, we do not have a time constraint, we can retain the basic storyline and also expand on it.”

Rahul Kumar Tewary, director and business head, One Life Studio, said, “If I feel strongly about a certain story, and I can visualise it in my mind, I will definitely push the envelope to get hold of that story. But the writer, too, has to be ready to push boundaries. Till now, the balance has been in favour of crime series even though middle-genres like ‘Made in Heaven’ are also successful on OTT platforms,”.

Talking about the co-dependence of books and movies, he concurred that all writers show interest to see their works adapted as it brings them wider recognition, fame and of course money. “Adaptation is always a give and take thing. Sometimes, the writers are happy with what has been done with their books, while others get upset with the creative liberties. And of course, they make good use of the shows for publicity and increased sales.”

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