The enterprising spirit of Sameer Nair and Deepak Sehgal which runs across the interesting content of Applause Entertainment is all set to jolt the OTT platform in 2024. Reliable sources confirm that two volatile political stories will be headlined by Applause Entertainment in the coming year.
The first is titled Half Lion chronicling the subdued contribution of former prime minister Narasimha Rao to the growth of Independent India. The web series is based on the book of the same name written by Vinay Sitapati. The series will be helmed by National award-winning director Prakash Jha, a filmmaker known for his expertise around socio-political themes such as Gangaajal, Apaharan, Rajneeti and Aarakshan, and most recently, the award winning drama series Ashram, to name a few. Half Lion will release in Hindi, Telugu, and Tamil in 2024.
The other is a crime procedural, based on writer Anirudhya Mitra’s book Ninety Days: The True Story of the Hunt for Rajiv Gandhi’s Assassin, Published by HarperCollins Publishers India Private Limited. Applause Entertainment has acquired the rights to Mitra’s book. A former journalist, Anirudhya was one of the first to report on the investigation and break several exclusive stories while the hunt for the assassins was on.
The series will be a blow-by-blow account of how the CBI’s Special Investigation Team cracked the assassination plot, identified the assassins and chased the mastermind, to his final hideout.Nagesh Kukunoor, the acclaimed film director and National award recipient whose previous collaboration with Applause Entertainment for City of Dreams was a huge hit, is helming the project.
Sameer Nair the prime architect of Applause Entertainment with more than thirty years of experience in the business of entertainment says, “The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you what or how to think and feel, but to give you something to think and feel about. This is what we strive to do. Building a scalable creative business requires art, science and magic blended with considerable fiscal discipline. The journey from being ‘Applause Entertainment’ to becoming the ‘House of Applause’ has been a dramatic yet rewarding ride and the love has been definitely worth all the risk. Heading into the future, we are excited to continue telling stories that are intensely local, but also aspire to resonate with diverse audiences across the globe.”