OTT: Race For Eyeballs
Amazon Prime Video India's maiden show Inside Edge, that captures the murky behind the scenes happenings of a T20 cricket tournament, debuted to a packed house. Within the first 30 hours, the cricket thriller, produced by Excel Entertainment which is run by celebrity duo Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani, got Amazon Prime as many paid subscribers as it usually would in 30 days. The OTT (over the top) digital platform, which has over one million subscribers, is spending a whopping Rs1 2 crore per episode on the web series. Stunned? Such astronomical production costs are becoming commonplace in the digital entertainment business.
The cost of a TV show, that boasts good production value, is in the region of Rs15 20 lakh per episode, whereas the cost of production for a show on Amazon Prime Video could be tenfold. Apart from Inside Edge, Amazon Prime India has lined up as many as 18 original shows, all of which will be as grandiose as the first. Besides, the company has signed exclusive deals with a few actors to showcase their new releases days after they hit the theatre this could cost upwards of Rs80 crore as also content deals with Mahesh Bhatt's Vishesh Films and Karan Johar's Dharma Productions.
Meanwhile, Netflix, with a paid subscriber base of around 2 3 lakh, has announced a global budget of $6 billion for original and licensed content. A significant amount of this, it is learnt, would be dedicated for content creation in India. "We will reach over 1,000 hours of original content globally this year, which is about 400 original TV series and films, including originals from
