MUMBAI: Broadcasters today are experimenting with a new type of show ownership–that of allowing the creators to hold the intellectual property (IP) rights. Most recently, Swastik Productions decided to own 100 per cent of its magnum opus Porus, which airs on Sony Entertainment Television in India, setting a benchmark in the industry as it went around the world gathering new broadcasters in new countries.
In an interaction with Indiantelevision.com, Big Synergy partner producer Namit Sharma, however, said that the concept of owning an IP was a very subjective conversation and not too relevant in present times. “A lot of people hype it to make themselves look good, so it makes you look like a kingpin when in actuality, the real monetary value of that IP could be nothing,” he said.
“I feel that the whole conversation in the industry is overrated. We want to be careful about when we do it and how we do it. We are a production service company. If we wanted to own an IP, we would have started making films, raised Rs 800 crore and taken the risk,” he added.
Digital players are furiously churning out new formats to attract the moving eyeballs of younger audiences. New formats, ideas, execution–you get it all. But TV isn’t far behind. TV today has innumerable reality shows to pick from and is not restricted to saas-bahu sagas, sitcoms and period dramas.
Sharma, feels that the Hindi GEC genre will not be experimenting anymore but this will be the prerogative of the digital industry. “They [Hindi GECs] are going to try and stick to what they have, whereas now all the experiments will start happening in the over the top and regional. We have a lot of developments happening in both these spaces,” he said.
Shedding light on his plans for digital space, he said that talks with industry daddies Amazon and Netflix are on. “As part of a two-year plan, we intend to focus on getting together with storytellers; they could be filmmakers, writers, book authors, film writers, and they could be people who may have never written anything.” Big Synergy will set the ball rolling in the regional market with South India.
Big Synergy, a part of the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Group, had tied up with Phantom Films, led by Anurag Kashyap, to create entertainment content across television and digital media. Speaking about the partnership, he said that there wasn’t any phenomenal interdependence apart operational synergies between the two entities. Both production set-ups co-ordinate in interesting ways behind the scenes.
Recently, Big Synergy produced a web series for Viu named Kaushiki that has garnered a lot of traction for the OTT platform. The production company is looking to produce five marquee web series, such as Bose: Dead/Alive, in the next one year along with its slate of regular shows for OTTs.
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