Monika Shergill, Vice President (Content) of Netflix India, stated that this year five Indian titles have appeared in Netflix’s ten global charts. According to Variety, The audience for Indian movies on the streaming service has increased by 50% since last year.
The service’s hits include Alia Bhatt’s Gangubai Kathiyawadi, the pan-Indian blockbuster RRR, and Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2, with Kartik Aaryan and Tabu.
He noted that, until recently, “most content” on Netflix India was in Hindi and English. However, for the past 18 months, the service has licensed titles in South Indian languages and streamed original content in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi and Bengali.
Another successful Alia film was dear, a story about domestic abuse that debuted as the service’s biggest non-English-language original movie opening worldwide. Shefali Shah and Vijay Verma gave strong performances in the film, which Alia co-produced with Red Chillies Entertainment.
“We believed in the vision of these filmmakers,” Shergill spoke of Rajamouli and Bhansali.
She went on to add that Gangubai Kathiawadi it was such a disturbing and edgy story about a sex worker in the red light district that it would have made a large part of the Indian audience uncomfortable to watch, but Sanjay’s craft and vision for the film was something they wanted to collaborate on. “Likewise, Rajamouli’s vision is so distinct and he thinks on such a grand scale that the combination of these two genres of history and fantasy appealed to us so much.”
malayalam language minnal murali, a superhero film set in Kerala starring Tovino Thomas and anthologies Paava Kadhaigal Y navarasa in tamil, kathalu pitta in Telugu and the disciple in Marathi have been equally appealing to local and global audiences.
Shergill added: “Titles are competing for release windows and as a result a lot of big value movies are competing at the box office. Because a lot of these big theatrical titles hit platforms and then become available to the public in India and Worldwide, streaming has revolutionized the theatrical film space in India.”
Summarizing his final thoughts, Shergill stated that exposure to global content through streaming has dramatically broadened the tastes of Indian audiences.
“Since the pandemic, we’ve seen an increase in people experimenting with content in different languages, like Korean and Spanish. Now is the time to tell truly great stories that will cross borders and bridge cultures.”