Amazon Prime Video to double content investments in 5 years in India; Forays into original movies

Unveiling its biggest slate to date in India, Amazon Prime Video has announced over 40 new titles in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, across original series, original movies and co-productions that it plans to launch over the next 24 months.

Prime Video announced new multi-year licensing deals and co-productions with some of India’s biggest studios. Prime video also announced its foray into original movie production in India with films in Hindi and Telugu, to be released directly on the service.

The service recently completed half a decade in India and announced that it will more than doubling its investment in Prime Video India over the next five years.

Amazon Prime Video said in a statement, “The service is augmenting its original programming for young adult audiences, and also exploring genres like supernatural and horror for the first time in its India journey. Furthermore, Prime Video is enhancing the scope of its unscripted series catalogue to explore genres like biographies, true-crime and investigative docudramas. Almost 70% of the new upcoming titles will feature new talent - both in front of and behind the camera.”

After launching Prime Video Channels last year, Amazon also launched Prime Video Store, its transactional video-on-demand (TVOD) movie rental service in India. Customers can now get early access to the latest Indian and international movies, including a rich catalogue of popular movies (award winners and franchises) from around the world on a transactional (per-movie) basis.

The platform said that its customer footprint is set to expand even further as the TVOD rental service will be available to all Prime members, as well as, anyone who isn’t a Prime member. Customers will get early rental access to movies across languages and the rental service can be accessed via the STORE tab on primevideo.com and the Prime Video app.

“In the last five years, we have built a strong slate of locally produced content across languages, super-serving the diverse entertainment needs of Indian customers.  With increased access and distribution, we have helped these great stories travel far and wide in India, and around the world. We have played a key role in helping expand the linguistic palette of Indian customers, thereby, increasing the audience base for creators and talent. Prime Video India today sees viewership from 99% of the country’s pin-codes. India continues to be one of Prime Video’s fastest-growing and most engaged locale globally. We are humbled by the love we have received from our consumers and continue to be deeply committed to delighting our customers with great content, while also fuelling the creative economy,” said Gaurav Gandhi, country head, Amazon Prime Video India.

Speaking about the multi-pronged approach on expanding the movies segment in India, Gandhi added, “In tune with our vision to become the most-loved entertainment hub, we have steadily innovated in the way we offer movies to our consumers, from offering films in a post-theatrical early-window to direct-to-service premieres bringing the most anticipated movies to consumers’ living rooms and preferred devices. We are deeply committed to growing this segment further and are going bigger on our film licensing partnerships, expanding our co-production initiatives and are now excited to announce our foray into original movies. In addition to our investments in great content, we are super excited about the launch of our TVOD movie rental service, that will not just give even more expanded reach to these films but also give customers more choice in how they want to access and watch content.”

Aparna Purohit, Head of India Originals, Amazon Prime Video, said, “Our mission has been to tell compelling, authentic and rooted stories that not just connect with audiences in India but resonate with audiences across the world. We feel humbled that the characters of our shows and films have inspired new archetypes, blazed a new trail, and in fact, become a part of the cultural zeitgeist. As we move forward, we are excited to partner with some of the most prolific creators to bring forth powerful stories across different formats, genres and languages for our customers. We are confident that our upcoming slate of shows and films will transcend all barriers of language, nationality or formats.”

Info@BestMediaInfo.com