Salman Khan, Shekhar Kapur, Neeraj Pandey to produce content for Hotstar

With a spurt in content on popular digital platforms like Netflix and Amazon, Star India is ready to up the ante in the digital game after it decided to boost its digital arm, Hotstar, by investing big in original content. As per a report in the Economic Times, Star India will spend Rs120 crore in producing original content for its Hotstar Specials.

Hotstar Specials will feature an extensive variety of Indian stories, mounted on a big scale, unconstrained by format. The company's ambition is not to make this a narrow or niche play, but to explode into the consciousness of the country in an unprecedented way, said a press release.

The press release also announced some of the big names in Hindi cinema as being associated with Hotstar Specials. Among these include superstar Salman Khan, and acclaimed directors like Neeraj Pandey, Shekhar Kapur and Kabir Khan. The other filmmaker’s to produce content for Hotstar include Nikkhil Advani, Ram Madhvani, Venkat Prabhu, Sudhir Mishra, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Nagesh Kukunoor, Mahesh Manjrekar, Vishal Furia, Rohan Sippy, Debbie Rao and Sharad Devarajan.

“With the mobile phone leading an explosion in the number of screens in the country, we feel that our content also needs to reinvent and boldly move forward. With Hotstar Specials we hope to create the biggest Indian stories delivered to a billion screens. To bring this vision alive, we are proud to partner with a stellar line up of talent who are headlining our first set of Hotstar Specials",” Star India, MD, Sanjay Gupta said in the statement.

As per the Economic Times report, Hotstar had received Rs 516 crore in funding in July last year from Star US Holdings.

Hotstar, is one of the leading Over-The-Top application in the country. It claims to have around 150 million active monthly users.