Freedom At Midnight to be SonyLIV’s most expensive show till date

Emmay Entertainment and Sony’s StudioNext have joined hands to adapt authors Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s non-fiction book Freedom At Midnight into a web-series of the same name, which will be streamed on SonyLIV. 

As per the makers, the show will bring alive defining moments from 1947, the year India attained independence. 

Emmay’s Nikkhil Advani, the producer and showrunner of the series, stated, “The year 1947 has been etched in India’s history as the year that shaped its fate. A riveting, emotional tale of an incident that altered the course of the nation, Freedom At Midnight is an attempt to bring to Indians the whole truth about the events that led us to our freedom - the courage, and the hope instilled in people by the personages who gave us the new India.” 

He added, “This is a story every Indian should know, and I feel honoured to be able to tell it along with my partners, Monisha [Advani] and Madhu [Bhojwani], and the team of writers, along with StudioNext. It is even more special for Emmay Entertainment that we get to bring this story to SonyLIV after our successful stint with Rocket Boys (2022). The platform has been at the forefront of narrating the stories of the homeland, and I look forward to associating with them on this project too.” 

In an interview with the news site Deadline, SonyLIV’s executive vice-president and business head Danish Khan said that Freedom At Midnight is the platform's most ambitious and highest budgeted show till date. “This is the most expensive and ambitious show we’ve done so far, simply because of the number of people involved and the number of big lead artistes. We have the right partner — Nikkhil Advani; [he] did a fantastic job with our Rocket Boys series,” he said.

Khan told the publication that Freedom At Midnight will be shot in India, Switzerland and the UK. Currently the show is in the pre-production stage and the makers are hoping to shoot it in the next six to nine months, provided there are no more delays due to COVID-19. He also said that some big names will be part of the cast. 

The executive vice-president also revealed that ever since SonyLIV switched over from a catch-up service to a subscription model focussing on ambitious original shows in 2020, its subscriber base has increased from 80,000 to 18 million. 

Freedom At Midnight has been penned by Abhinandan Gupta, Adwitiya Kareng Das and Gundeep Kaur.