Padma Shri Awardee and National Award-winning director Nila Madhab Panda of I Am Kalam and Kadvi Hawa fame marks his OTT directorial debut with The Jengaburu Curse that streams from August 9. In a freewheeling chat with The Free Press Journal, Nila spills the beans on his show being India’s first ever cli-fi (climate-fiction) thriller and more.
Talking about the current change due to the OTT landscape, Nila shares, “If we look at the change as per Indian culture, yes, the storytelling has changed. But, let’s have a fact reading here. In American and European cinema, television always has a quality, at times even better than cinema. Whereas in India, there is still a massive difference between television and cinema, and there’s nothing called documentary. During Covid, when theatres were shut, audiences developed a habit of home viewing on our phones or small screens. I see a great opportunity that films aren’t working in theatres except of those that has big stars like Ranveer Singh or Shah Rukh Khan.”
“More than films, OTT is becoming bigger and better since it has a better content quality. However, audiences are increasing but I still feel, we aren’t catering the Indian content well enough to our people. This is the reason that a Korean drama Squid Game worked like anything in India,” he adds.
On his OTT offering The Jengaburu Curse, he explains, “I wanted to explore a whole new world of things. I examined how Pataal Lok and The Family Man worked. I thought, this is a great time for me to tell a story that fills a void. I have never done a long form story before this. It was challenging for me to shift myself from films to OTT. It was tiring and energy consuming medium but at the same time it was fun. I tried writing a show for two years but couldn’t. It is more liberating than films though. Also, there’s no box office risk here. Imagine, to have erected a mountain as a character in the show that leads to open a whole new dimension. People will see a different world in the show.”
“There were good three-four years of research underwent in the show. The Jengaburu Curse is about mining world, the greed and the curse is what we have done. With this show, I am introducing a new genre of cli-fi thriller,” Nila concludes.
