MUMBAI: Peninsula Pictures, the production house known for its shows like Vishkanya, Dev Anand, Shree Krishna, Mayavi Maling and Aladdin has decided to foray into the digital world, with the intent of providing quality content. One of the key reasons for entering digital is also to retain show IPs.
Apart from its expertise in genres like mythology and fantasy, the production house has plans to experiment with a romantic thriller, crime, comedy and paranormal genres among others for its new web series. As far as television is concerned, it has plans to produce shows in genres like contemporary love story, thriller, etc.
The production house, led by Nissar Parvej and Alind Srivastava, highlighted that the year 2018 was a bittersweet one. Parvej said that Shree Krishna has done quite well in the industry and has completed 400 episodes. Mayavi Maling was yet another show produced for Star Bharat that didn’t garner much attention from viewers but it didn’t let them down. Aladdin, a period fantasy for Sony Sab, has already made an entry in the space, while Alibaba for Colors and two other shows are in the pipeline to enter the TV space. It also has plans to produce shows for the regional segment.
Talking about the challenges that they have faced, Srivastava said, “Detective shows take time for the audiences to pick up. The other challenge was streamlining our studio which was launched last year. In 2018, there were a lot of shows that were VFX. Now, we will be able to take more VFX-based shows. We also want it to become one of our strengths and this does not mean that we just want to stick to VFX shows.”
Parvej further added that they don’t want to pick up too much work so that they can focus on quality. Srivastava said that there was a wave of shows like Daayan, Chudail that were trendy in 2018. Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah is the show that is still working well with the audience. “One should know that when you are making a show, you are making it for the audience, so whatever relates to them should be made and should follow certain basics like touching the emotional core of it,” he said.
Talking about OTT, Parvej said that the money is definitely more in the OTT space, but according to him, that does not make TV insecure. However, it will take 4-5 years for OTT to settle. He feels that show production cost on TV will go down because of dipping advertising money.
