Farzi, Aranyak, Rudra: What makes thrillers the first choice for an actor debuting on OTT? | Web Series
What’s common between Rudra, Sacred Games, Aranyak, Aarya, and Breathe season one? Well, they of course marked the OTT debut of successful film actors Ajay Devgn, Saif Ali Khan, Raveena Tandon, Sushmita Sen and R Madhavan respectively. But they were all thrillers!
Even Shahid Kapoor, who will soon be seen in Farzi directed by Raj and DK, has chosen a thriller to debut on the web. What is it about the genre that makes it a favourite with these established film names to venture into a new space?
Filmmaker Rajesh Mapuskar, who directed Devgn in Rudra, says, “It is because the audience finds it exciting, and the actors always go by that. The viewers like thrillers, violence. It is not about morally right or wrong, but thrillers are getting more eyeballs. Obviously that becomes your entry point into OTT. The actor is able to explore this genre in a long format, as on the big screen it is limited. Here, you can be real, and there is no song-dance to bring audiences to the theatres.”
Tandon, who received rave reviews for Aaranyak, says she is personally a fan of edge of the seat nail biting thrillers, “It keeps me glued to the screen so obviously I would want to also do work where one can hold the audiences attention. I love binge watching so like it when one can hold the audiences with good scripts and performances.”
Manoj Bajpayee too, had made his web debut with The Family Man, in which he played a spy investigating a potential terrorist attack. The show was a runaway success, and the second season became a massive hit. Casting director Shubham Gaur, who has cast for projects such as Anurag Basu’s Ludo, says thrillers have always been popular in films, and now it has spilled into the web. “They were popular even back in the 1990s, but more of comedy, romance would surface. The web medium started surfacing around 2015. Even then Rajkummar Rao did a web show like Bose: Dead or Alive. As casting directors, we look forward to casting in something slice of life, light hearted, it rarely happens, because thrillers are so popular,” he opines.
In fact, given their star power, the makers also want to capitalise and earn their money back, and thrillers are a safe bet. Gaur continues, “They always make sure the project is mounted on a big star with insane amount of money, what i safer than bit of action, and something which keeps people on the edge? We recently cast for Mukhbir- The Story of a Spy, and what we had read in the screenplay, makers had to cut around 20-25 minutes from each episode just to keep people hooked and get them to watch the entire show!”
Director Abhinay Deo, whose next show Brown starring Karisma Kapoor also falls in the same genre, however feels that the genre doesn’t deserve the attention here. “I don’t think it has got anything to do with the genre but with what is working with the audience. A story spread across eight-ten episodes is very conducive for certain genres, it’s nothing to do with the actors preferring that, but what the audiences want to watch, which is why that genre is getting made the most,” he reasons.
