Kiran Rao feels a lot more good work is about to come out on OTT

Kiran graced the 7th edition of the Indian Screenwriters Conference (ISC) hosted by the Screenwriters Association of India (SWA).

Mumbai: Filmmaker Kiran Rao, who is known for ‘Laapataa Ladies’ and ‘Dhobhi Ghat’, has said that Indian OTT still has miles to go in terms of path-breaking content.

Kiran graced the 7th edition of the Indian Screenwriters Conference (ISC) hosted by the Screenwriters Association of India (SWA).

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She shared that streaming platforms initially displayed the potential to elevate immersive storytelling and detailed world-building, and while there have been notable writing achievements, she believes there’s still “a lot more” to be explored and accomplished.

She said, “Of course, there is a lot of self-censorship, things that we cannot do for audiences, that has come into play now. It wasn’t there during the big boom of American TV writing. It was being able to tell stories in a way that you just cannot in films, with characters opening up, building the world in greater detail, and speaking about different issues was possible”.

The director said that it continues to be the case for quite a large number of industries, but she is not too sure about how it’s unfolding in India.

She further mentioned, “There is also a need to get more audience to migrate to OTT. That successfully happened during Covid-19. Now, more and more you see the kind of things that are so-called ‘working’ or big on OTT in India are usually stuff which isn’t vastly different from what we would see in films. So, the promise of world-building and doing other stuff may not have been (fulfilled). That’s also because I think there has been a bit of a bubble burst”.

“OTT was this golden egg, everyone could do everything that they dreamt of and it had to come full circle. There is a lot of promise there, a lot of stories to be told, I just don’t know how many people are commissioning them and the economics allows one to do. Like everything, there was a golden age, but I am not sure where it goes from here. We still have some great writing on OTT in India, but there is a lot more to be done.”

When asked by moderator-writer Mitesh Shah if she plans to start a project for streaming, she said, “Nothing has been greenlit yet. I have a couple of series ideas, including a mini-series, but I don’t know where to go with what I am doing. I keep feeling like I want to take the ideas that I wrote for my series and make them into films”.

ISC is set to conclude on Sunday with renowned screenwriters and creators including Shoojit Sarkar, C Prem Kumar, Christo Tomy, Hemanth M Rao, Vivek Athreya, Biswapati Sarkar and Anand Tiwari sharing their experiences, techniques and the secrets behind their most successful works, and how they negotiate the changing dynamics of the industry.