What’s Holding Back Indian Cinema
Insights on the future of cinema in India
In Episode 14 of The Media Room, media journalist and author Vanita Kohli-Khandekar talks to Jyoti Deshpande, President of Media & Content Business at Reliance Industries Ltd (which includes Jio Studios) and an influential figure in India’s media and entertainment sector, about the evolving dynamics of the Indian film business. From building one of the country’s most ambitious studio slates at Jio Studios to navigating the fragmented world of OTT distribution, Deshpande shares how she’s reimagining storytelling at scale. She unpacks the studio’s shift from quantity to quality in 2025, the thinking behind fully financing and owning IP, and why deep creative partnerships are key to long-term success. They also talk about India’s broken moviegoing habit, the crisis of screen scarcity beyond top cities, why regional growth—not just streaming—is vital to the industry's future, what’s blocking its global breakout, the pitfalls of inefficient production systems and the promise of AI in streamlining content creation. Tune in for insights on the future of cinema in India.
NOTE: This transcript is done by a machine. Human eyes have gone through the script but there might still be errors in some of the text, so please refer to the audio in case you need to clarify any part. If you want to get in touch regarding any feedback, you can drop us a message on [email protected].
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TRANSCRIPT
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar (Host): You know, in 2024, Indians brought 883 million movie tickets, that's about 6% less than what it was in 2023. And I think about 11,800 crore was spent on those tickets, again, but 3% less than in 2023. But remember, box office is only two thirds of the 20,000 crore that Indian cinema made in 2024.
But the box office is extremely important for what the streaming and TV companies pay you. And therefore, the rest of the 40% and your profitability depends on how well a film does at the box office. In any case, a film's stature in the audience 's eyes, in the trade's eyes, depends a lot on the box office.
While 2025 hasn't been such a blockbuster here, you know, it has been a good steady year. We've had hits like Raid 2, Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning, Bhool Chook Maaf. I've done about 4,800 crores in the first five months, which is more than what the first five months of 2024 did, again, or max data.
But the point is the film business is not a happy place these days. There is a sense of worry and dismay and streaming prices are not going up and the habit has been broken. As luck would have it, I had a chance last week to speak to Jyoti Deshpande.
She's the head of Jio Studios. It's a part of the media and content business at Reliance Industries, a separate arm of Reliance Industries. And they've had a wonderfully successful 2024.
They had some of the biggest hits of the year, Bai Ban Bhaari Deva, Shaitaan and many others. And I asked her to unpack the Jio process and also what her take is on how the amount of tickets sold or the number of people walking in to watch movies in the theatre could grow.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Hi Jyoti, welcome to the media room.
I can't tell you how delighted I am to have you on this one because you and I have spoken over the years about the film business but I've never got to do a video interview with you. So, I'm super kicked about this one.
Jyoti Deshpande: Thank you for having me, Vanita.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: You're most welcome. Jyoti, last year I remember you guys announced a slate of 100 films and also you had a blockbuster 2024. I mean, the RL balance sheet has a special box on Jio Studios.
So, I found it very nice because a lot of the stuff that you were telling me last year when we did that interview, it's all there in that particular box. So, do you want to take us through what has happened with that slate of 100? Where are you?
And I think you have Ma coming up this year and one more. Shaitaan. Shaitaan 2?
Jyoti Deshpande: Shaitaan of Sardar and Durandar. So, we have a nice slate coming up. Did you just take my audience through where is Jio Studios?
Sure. I think arguably it's one of the youngest studios set up only in 2018 from scratch. So, in that sense, we are a startup within this large behemoth called Reliance Industries Limited and one of the first mantras that was given to me by Mukesh Bhai is that, we like to scale all our businesses.
We love to keep our eye on the consumer. So, all our businesses, our approach is consumer first and not really inward focused, really outward focused. And that scaling has to be systematic and profitable.
So, we follow a formula called crawl, walk, run. Crawl is proof of concept. Walk is scaling to a certain degree and running is really scaling it.
So, we exactly followed that in our sort of seven-year history and of which two years was COVID. So, our very first movie was 3, 3-1. That was our very first movie way back in 2018.
And what a way to start the studio. And I think in COVID, during COVID, a lot of M&A was going on and that's when I got the helm of Viacom for a couple of years just after that. And we knew that we wanted to scale the distribution business, the studio business, all of that.
So, the idea was to look at developing a lot of content during COVID. So, Jio Studios developed a lot of stories during COVID with a lot of rigour. We put together a very strong consumer proposition across theatrically released films, across direct to digital films, as well as OTT originals and series.
And then, so we developed and that's when the 100 film slate after two years ago, we announced the whole 100 film slate. To give you an update, all of the films have been made. Almost all have been released, either theatrically or on some OTT platform or the other.
A bunch of it went on, first, the original Woot. A bunch of it went on the Jio Star, Merged Avatar. A lot of it went on Amazon Prime, on Netflix, on Zee5 and such other platforms.
And a handful of them are slated for release in the coming 12 months out of the old, you know, when I say old, it's about two years old, 100 film lot or 100 story lot. All of them are not films. And last year was a phenomenal year for us, you know, because in the context of what was happening in the media and entertainment landscape, which was going through a lot of consolidation on the distribution side, we saw the Disney and, you know, Viacom merger, which now has given us the very powerful Jio Star.
We saw the Zee and Sony merger fall through. And literally Amazon and Netflix were the only two, you know, games in town as far as, you know, OTT platforms were concerned, while the others were reasonably distracted with their own internal issues. So in that context, to have a year where we have more than 50% of the Hindi film box office and a broad spectrum of, you know, stories from a beautiful, warm hearted and large hearted Laapata ladies that went all the way to Oscars, to an article 370 that punched a pack, to a 3-2 which became the highest grossing Hindi film ever in the history, to Shaitaan, to Singham.
I mean, we couldn't have asked for a better year theatrically with a very large market share. Even on OTT, we had a spectacular year with, you know, Dhoomdha, Mrs., which sort of became a huge topic of debate and discussion on social media with men, women, everyone participating. Tikram, which won lots of awards.
Sector 36, where, you know, Vikrant Massey gave a, you know, a stellar performance. Even from an awards perspective, I think, whether it's IFA Awards, Filmfare Awards, Screen Awards, you know, whatever. Our films swept, you know, all the awards.
So commercial acclaim, critical acclaim, I don't know if we ourselves will be able to replicate that kind of a year. And about 98% of our revenues in the 24-25 financial year came from all third party licensing. Jio Studios was not at all dependent on our sister company for its revenues.
So I think that tells a lot about the power of, you know, storytelling, the rigour that goes on with a wide varied genre of films and 90% of them not star dependent. So with the exception of Singham, which packed a punch in terms of its star power, I think most of our slate was high on content and not really dependent on any big star. So, you know, even ending the year with Sky Force, which was greatly acclaimed and did a decent number in the box office as well.
So I think we bookended the year very well. This year is low on quantity. We are not, we are focused more on quality.
We're building out franchises, we're building out our worlds, we're letting the market settle in. So less is more is our motto for this year. And with an eye on consolidation and from a knowledge point of view, eye on tech, you know, keenly looking at AI and such other areas to see where our industry can go from a production efficiency perspective.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: When you say that, you know, the slate of hundred is ending or you have X number of projects this year, do you produce and finance all of them yourself? And what is your operational relationship with Jiostar? I mean, where in the RIL sort of family tree does Jiostudio sit?
And then there is Jiostar, which is another 26, 38,000 crore company, which also makes loads of content and movies and blah, blah, blah. So what is the relationship between the two?
Jyoti Deshpande: Completely arm's length. These are two. So Jiostudios is a hundred percent RIL and Jiostar is majority owned by RIL directly or indirectly.
And Jiostar's focus is distribution, building very different KPIs to Jiostudios. Jiostudios is a market leader in storytelling, pure storytelling. And the relationship is completely arm's length.
So if there are any stories of Jiostudios, whenever Jiostar wants to begin licensing entertainment content, it's currently focused a lot on sport as well as TV business. But when it starts looking at building its entertainment content for its digital platform, if there are any stories of Jiostudios that resonate with Jiostar, we'll licence it on an arm's length basis. But at the moment, it's very much independent.
And Jiostudios is a hundred percent RIL owned profit centre that stands on its own two feet.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Produce and finance everything on your own or because Maddock films, many of these films, no, many of these films, not three, I don't know which one is Maddock films, but do you have associations or co-productions with others? How does it work?
Jyoti Deshpande: We have co-productions with others, but we fund the entire film for our share in the IP. So we invest in intellectual property. We rarely get involved with films where we have to buy it at the last moment and things like that.
We rarely do that. We are part of this film of any story from script to screen. And so that's our journey.
And so we invest in the IP and we finance it ourselves and we are fully self-funded.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: In that sense, Jyoti, you are better, Jio is far better placed than many studios and standalone studios. There are one and two man shops which do very good work, but they are smaller. And they always have to first raise the money and then make the films.
Is capital an issue in the film business? You are far better placed as a studio, I think, of course.
Jyoti Deshpande: I think most people cannot say that capital is an issue. I don't think capital is an issue. The way where we see ourselves in the pecking order, we look at ourselves as a super studio.
If the one and two man people start calling themselves studios, then we'd like to give them wings and look at organic or inorganic ways to collaborate with some of the talent associated with those one or two man or woman studios. So for us, Maddox is a talented company and our goal would be to see how we can help that company scale, which is what we've done in the last three years. And similarly, we have deep relations with B62 of Aditya Dhar.
We've been working with them over a number of stories over the last few years. So we like to consistently develop our relationship with certain talents over a period of time. And we find various structures to do that.
Not necessarily equity investment, but it could be output deals. It could be a first look deal. It could be a multiple year deal across a bunch of stories.
So I think there's no one size fits all, but we'd like to develop a longer medium to longer term relationship with talent so that we can give them wings to fly. And we sort of put our complementary strengths together to tell superior stories with great rigour and bring them to the audiences with all power and aplomb. So I think this strategy works for us where it's fewer relationships, but deeper relationships.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: But in each of these relationships, once a film comes through, you own the IP. So if I was to look at all the releases last year, you own the IP. Yes.
Okay. So they get a rev share or something. Is that how it works?
Jyoti Deshpande: So you could go on the IP and then after a certain hurdle, because the studio would have made the investment. So in your waterfall, you have certain hurdles. So after our first profits, we would share the residual profits or overflow as it's called in industry parlance in a certain pre-agreed ratio, depending on the counterpart.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: What is your green lighting process and how is it different? So you had, and we both know that in this business, success in one year does not guarantee success in the second year or the third year. So I think lots of people have spent a lot trying to bring science to the creative business, but beyond that point, it does not work.
It works at the distribution and it perhaps works at the processing. So what is your green lighting process and how is it different?
Jyoti Deshpande: So, first of all, as a studio head, one of the things that we've done from our perspective is not really have a large team of people who don't have a big body of work, who will sit in judgement on stories that come their way from experienced writers and filmmakers. So first of all, that's a process that I personally, after 30, 35 years of hard blood and sweat in this industry, don't like. And I feel that people need to earn their seat on the table through sheer hard work and having dirtied their hands and having a body of work behind them to be able to opine creatively.
So I feel that if I carry the title of a studio head, I have no right to do that unless I have time to hear every story. So I ensure that I hear every story and along with a team of people, but also not necessarily with the creative lens, all of them, my marketing teams, my PR teams, my distribution teams, my, you know, all the lens, all the people who are stakeholders in the production as well as monetization and distribution of a film, the script to screen journey has various stages. So all the stakeholders, we listen to the story, I listen to it as well.
And then first of all, if the story itself is not appealing, the characters are not appealing, it's not clutter breaking. It's also, you know, something that's been done before, but has a star attached to it. I think usually we use the power of no.
But if the story is compelling, then we run the other lens on it in terms of, okay, now who's the star cast that is attached to it? Who is the creative talent? Who's the cinematographer?
Who are the technicians? Who's the director? Who else is attached to it?
If there's a producer attached, what is their track record? If there is a talented filmmaker or storyteller, actor, what is that recent track record? What has been the pre-sales from digital or satellite licensing for a similar comparable film?
Is the genre resonating with the audiences these days? So in terms of your breakeven, what has been the past box office? In terms of your breakeven analysis, we generally run two or three scenarios, you know, based on all of this information and benchmarking.
You can't only cherry pick your best case scenario. You also look at what is your worst case scenario based on recent empirical data, as opposed to going back 10 years and living in some time warp, you know, because we are in the audience trends changing business. Every day there is a new fad and, you know, South remakes, for example, were much in, sort of, vogue.
And then one fine day, you know, three films in a row of a South remake will flop. And then, you know, everyone who's saddled with a South remake will be shivering and thinking, now what do I do with this lemon? How do I get rid of it?
Which ones are these? No, I mean, from our own slate, we did Baby John with a lot of, you know, hope and because it had Atlee, it had Varun Dhawan, but it didn't perform in the box office. Although it was a very well made movie and on OTT, people watched it, really loved it when it came on OTT, but they didn't sample the movie in the theatres.
It just, the footfalls were simply not there. So, learning is very current and on the job and on a daily basis, you have to be nimble and keep changing your decisions. So, our greenlighting is a very rigorous process.
So, something may be very attractive, but for its budget and star cast, it may not be viable for that genre. You know, a big star cast in an offbeat or slightly eclectic genre may not make it a viable proposition and so on and so forth. So, there's no rulebook.
We don't take off a chart. You use your intuition and your qualitative experience to overlay some of the quantitative points when you greenlight a film.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: But can you share an example here of getting it right and getting it wrong? Some fun examples from movies already released.
Jyoti Deshpande: La Pata Ladies 3. 3 is a great example of getting it right. You know, when 3 won, 3-2 was an easier one.
Of course, we did not believe that it would go on to become the biggest all-time hit beating a Jawan and a Pathan and all the big guns. We did not believe that it would do that, but it went on to do it. However, when we did 3-1, it was a small film under 15 crores of budget.
You know, OTT was not big then. It was just starting. Typically, such a film would have gone in 200 screens or a very small release and seen how it goes.
But once I saw the film, I thought it was very, very clutter-breaking and I decided to put a P&A of an amount equal to the budget of the film. It was a gamble. And so we decided to basically look at opening the film like a big film and put in the P&A of a big film and it went on to do over 125 crores in box office.
So I think these are puns that you have to take and otherwise you can't disrupt, you can't do anything new. Box office is mathematical. If you don't distribute the film widely, you're not going to get a box office hit.
And with the sliding scale in box office share, which goes down every week, unless you open big, you're not going to get the lion's share of the box office. The exhibitor is going to get it. So it's not an exact science.
Again, it's something that...
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: You know, for my audience, I must say P&A means publicity and advertising expenditure. That's what Jyothi is talking about here. You know, one of the things which I thought streaming has been wonderful in many ways for the business, it has helped us expand the market, discover the domestic crossover, you know.
So we managed to get to see Malayalam films and Tamil films when we went to see Bengali films. A lot of nice Bengali films came out. So the domestic crossover has happened, the global crossover in terms of being able to watch a lot of stuff from overseas. I think globally it has helped homogenise distribution.
I used to head Eros, so you would know how tough it was when that was not the case. But streaming has not, you know, I would have thought, let's say, you know, when Manjumal Boys happened and when 2024 happened and 10% of India's box office was Malayalam films, I was very happy. I said, finally, we are seeing the making of one cinema market, you know, one India market.
Because one Indian market means that they are all watching Vaipan Bhaari Deva, a big hit but a big hit in Maharashtra. It didn't travel outside, it was a Jio Studios film, I know. But why has that expansion not translated into better footfalls or a larger growing market?
I still can't see that. I don't know if it is something that would happen or if it has potential to happen. But just your take sitting as the head of a studio like this, what is your sense?
Jyoti Deshpande: I have a very clear and reasonably strong view on what is the barrier to this. And I'll give you a couple of examples, one very old and one very new. And my worldview on, you know, in my utopian world, how would I like it to be?
I don't know if it's possible or not, but the design of it. So, you know, let's go back all the way to 2001, you know, to Devdas. Devdas was one of the most widely distributed films ever in the history of Indian cinema.
You know, I used to be Neeraj then and we had taken it to Cannes on the very first big red carpet film, you know, a film in all its glory with all the talent, Shah Rukh and Aishwarya. And, you know, we had appointed a sales agent Focus, Focus Films, who sat there, we screened the film, we did media interviews, we took a variety screen cover, covered a variety of screens, plastered the entire festival with our film equal to a big Hollywood Mission Impossible. It was less, it was not less in visibility than any of those films.
Focus Films sat there and sold our film to, you know, hundreds of countries, France, Germany, you know, Italy. So we were sitting and making those sales right there in Cannes as we should. And that film really opened so many new markets for Bollywood films, for Indian language films, and Hindi language films, mainstream.
Now, how these sales are done is each of these markets want all rights for the film. So when you, when you make a sale in France, they want, suppose it's going to a company called in France, they want theatrical, digital, satellite, TV, you know, DVD, they want all rights, even if it's for 10 years, even if it's not in perpetuity, it's five years or 10 years, they want all the rights, so that they can cross collateralised and really monetise against the minimum guarantee that they're paying you.
And then they in turn champion the film and put it out in mainstream networks that they have deals with, rather than trying to target the same Indian diaspora in those countries. Now, fast forward to where we are today. Let's take an example of Lapata Ladies.
Lapata Ladies did exceedingly well on Netflix, okay? Netflix owns worldwide digital rights for the film. But apart from Hindi, Indian footprint, the Oscar run, etc., would have given Lapata Ladies some legs to really get sampled in the international markets on Netflix. However, the algorithm of Netflix does not really display Lapata Ladies to a person who does not regularly consume Indian content. So, but having licensed worldwide rights to Netflix, we can no longer licence the films due to the various holdbacks that we have. And because the digital rights are gone, the satellite rights are gone on a worldwide basis to somebody else, we are no longer able to, nobody will only buy theatrical rights to distribute to mainstream markets.
So, the way the business has evolved over the years, and the dominant nature of how OTT rights are structured, actually prevent us and prohibit us from really doing, you know, that whole 70-30 kind of a business. So, Hollywood makes, you know, 70 or at least 60% of its business from international markets and only 35 to 40% from its domestic market. We have the opposite.
70% of our revenues comes from India and only hardly 30% comes from the international market. But because of the way these deals are structured, we are not able to explore licensing our films. So, Lakota Ladies is running in theaters in Japan for more than 16 weeks, 20 weeks, it's running in theatres in Japan, Kiran Rao has been called there, with great fanfare, it's continuing to stay in the cinemas.
We are not able to replicate that model in every market because of the way these rights are structured. We do not have the rights to give to. So, my utopian template would be, we licence only India rights to any platform in India.
Whether it's a TV channel, whether it's a satellite channel, whether it's an OTT platform, we need to break India rights and international rights have to be broken down by country. And we will of course have to put, instead of making three global deals, we will have to make probably 500 deals and put in a lot of effort to make those small, small individual deals to actually get our stories out in the global market. But although it'll be far more effort, that is my ideal utopian template.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: But Jyoti, aren't deals anywhere region specific? So, even on linear television, I remember one film can be shown on Star TV, but it cannot be shown in Afghanistan or Pakistan because the rights are not there. So, aren't deals anywhere region specific?
Not at all.
Jyoti Deshpande: If you licence a content to Netflix, they have global rights for that content, for the number of years that you've licensed it for. And you cannot licence digital, they have exclusive global rights, same with Amazon Prime, any platform. Jiostar, I will just give the example of Netflix, it's not too single out Netflix, but I'm saying, the OTT template is that they have exclusive rights for that period of time because they're paying top dollar for it.
So, that's what they're negotiating in exchange for the money that they are paying. So, if we want to give them less, we'll have to take less money also from them. It's not going to come...
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: You have the option of... See, they have 200 countries in their bucket. So, they need to have something which can be leveraged in those 200 markets.
Reach doesn't translate into viewership.
Jyoti Deshpande: No. See, what is the conundrum of any distribution? Reach, you cannot reach, but it doesn't translate to distribution and viewership unless you are locally pushing the content and your algo is pushing that content and forcing people to see it in the top 10 trending tiles and to sample it.
So, unless that local markets, all of these large conglomerates operate their local strategies independently, it's not centrally controlled.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Netflix told me that the algo pushes it up in the global top 10 whatever, when the film is done very well locally. So, if the film does very well in India, for example, say A Family Man on Amazon, that's not a film, that's a show or something else. It gets pushed up naturally through the algo, but it is that rare one which...
Jyoti Deshpande: I mean, so Laapata Ladies makes the cut or two, three more films make the cut, but all of the films don't make the cut. That's the point.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Your point, expanding will mean more hard work in terms of global expansion. You're talking about that.
Jyoti Deshpande: We're doing lazy business here, right? We sit in our offices and cut three deals and you're done. And then you attend film festivals to party and network, but you're not really doing business there because your rights are already gone.
And I may sound harsh, but that is the reality.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: No, that's okay. That's your point of view. And I think you're in a position to have that point of view, but how would you do it differently?
So, one is cutting up the deals for Netflix or whatever, streaming.
Jyoti Deshpande: First of all, put your money where your mouth is. So, you'll first have to take a haircut on your local rights value. And it's very nice.
The trade-off is between de-risking your current outlay. So, suppose you put a hundred out and you want to de-risk 80 through your pre-sales, you may be able to only de-risk 60 through your pre-sales. And then now your 40 is at risk.
And the sum of the parts from all that hard work will have to more than compensate for the risk you're taking. So, you have to consistently put effort in growing that market and then you will have a sustainable competitive advantage. But for that, you'll have to sacrifice the current comfort and safety net that we all like.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: It's all very… I'm doing a book on this and like I told you, I'm going to be speaking to you separately for that. But it's very nice that we have a stage where we can take this arsenic mark global and it's wonderful.
But the fact is, it is also not growing within the country. Ticket sales fell, I think 6% last year, though on value we are more or less stable because average ticket prices keep rising. So, and that's my last question to you.
What is it that you get? Is it more screens? Is it more money?
I think supplies also, I've been told that production is halved. You know, films that can be released in a thousand screens or more. That way India makes like 1700 or 2000 films a year.
But how do we ensure that there is more footfall, more people are coming? The habit seems to be broken. They come out, but they come out only for that rare 3-2 or the Punjab or the Shaitan or whatever.
How to get that habit back? What will it take?
Jyoti Deshpande: So, I think when you compare our screen number to China or America, in absolute terms, our screen numbers are a fraction of the number of screens. So, population to screen density, we are very, very poor, you know, compared to some of these other countries. But more than that, I think the problem is the distribution of the screens.
You know, the exhibition sector consolidated, everybody bought each other and effectively there's only one company now, you know, the PVR INOX conglomerate. However, the density of the multiplexes is all in more affluent towns and it's overpopulated and the screen choice is more dense in these affluent cities and towns. And as you go down to tier 2, tier 3, tier 4 cities and towns, you absolutely, people are watching it on telegram.
It's only piracy. There is no screen. They wait for the OTT, for it to come on some OTT platform and watch it on their mobile phone.
And we have data to prove that. So, I think India will always be a country that loves cinema purely because, you know, we don't have those many parks and theme parks and bowling alleys and, you know, outdoorsy stuff. We don't even have roads, you know, to take a walk.
So, I think not cooking in the kitchen, having a meal out, taking a break from your daily routine and going to a nice AC cinema and watching a movie will always remain part of our pop culture and part of what we love, provided that there is a cinema near your home. You know, when we advertise, there will be a cinema near your home, but there is no cinema near your home. It's other than for the very affluent.
Why is the ATP going up? Because the non-price sensitive minuscule target audience is the one who has access to the cinema and the middle class and lower middle class who will actually drive volume up and who are price sensitive actually don't have access to the cinema. So, I think either the plexus should look at the expansion or some new players should come in.
That is what is holding back, you know, the distribution of where these cinemas are located.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Well said. In fact, I've been saying for years that there must be some tax incentives or holidays, make it an infrastructure, bundle it with infrastructure and say creating screens is infrastructure. So, that sort of allows free flow of capital into.
Jyoti Deshpande: Every now and then somebody comes and pitches a project, but it's not, you know, it's reasonably shallow and there's no proof of concept and, you know, it never goes through. So, I hope somebody will come along and do this. Having said that, we are on the brink of a digital revolution, yet another digital revolution with artificial intelligence, etc.
You know, all the big tech companies, whether it's Microsoft, Google, Meta, they're all investing huge bucks in this area. So, will people put money in bricks and mortar, you know, remains to be seen. Is it sensible to do that remains to be seen.
But I think an Indian audience will always come to watch a good entertainer. Given the immense choice that they have on OTT, I think it's only right to say that films made with cinematic experience and really clutter breaking ideas and world building will have more resonance in cinema and a small one or two location based story, even if it's heartwarming, is better viewed at home.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Says the studio which had Lapata Ladies last year. So, I know because I saw it in the theatre. And I was really surprised that people discovered it so late.
So, I was like, why didn't you see it? But I didn't realise that the collection had been that. But this has been wonderful.
Just one last thing. Jyoti, you mentioned something about increasing production processes. Has any work happened?
Has Jio Studios done anything? Or are these ideas floating in your mind? Because costs have been a huge issue in the studio ecosystem.
Jyoti Deshpande: You know, I'll just leave you with one thought today. Most Hollywood movies, I don't know the exact number for Mission Impossible, etc. But most Hollywood movies, they spend a lot of time, effort and money on pre-production and actually produce a film, which is principal photography, only for 45 days or max 60 days.
Here we are still doing 200 days, 250 days extra. So, all that money is not showing up on screen. So, I think it's still a very archaic way of producing films.
And our filmmakers and talent have a long way to go. We want to quote examples from Hollywood to suit our needs, but we don't take the good things from that industry as well and imbibe it in the way we function. So, a lot of work is going on and breaking down these processes of filmmaking, finding out where the wastage is actually coming through, how much of the footage that we shoot actually makes it to the film.
How do we avoid that wastage? Sometimes we invest in VFX also, we invest in production also, because of the lack of planning. So, we half build a set, and also waste money on VFX.
How do you put teams together to work in tandem and up the skill, such that, you know, we get away from this notion that we hear from the creative industry, you know. So, do we need a fresh breed of talent who need to be skilled up and have a fresh approach to how stories are produced? One is a creative aspect of it.
What story are you telling? Second is, how are you telling the story and how can we produce it for maximum bang, for buck for the audience, where every dollar spent or every rupee spent shows up on screen and how can we use technology effectively to do this along with the human mind and human creativity? How do we blend the two?
So, it's WIP at the moment. I don't have anything to show you, but when I have something to show you, I will give you a call.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: That will be really interesting. Let me know. But this has been so wonderful, especially the global part.
I really enjoyed listening to that one. Thank you, Jyoti, so much for your time and hope to see you soon in the Media Room sometime.
Jyoti Deshpande: Wish you all the best, Vanita. Keep shining as always. Bye.
Vanita Kohli-Khandekar: Thank you.
