Kiran Rao calls out Indian OTT for lack of originality; says, “I think there has been a bit of a bubble burst”

February 15, 2025 - 4:55 PM IST

Filmmaker Kiran Rao, whose indie directorial outings Laapataa Ladies and Dhobi Ghat entered the mainstream space, says the Indian streaming landscape has not been able to live up to the promise of offering viewers rich world-building and complex storytelling.

Kiran Rao calls out Indian OTT for lack of originality; says, “I think there has been a bit of a bubble burst”

Rao noted that streaming platforms initially showed the potential for immersive storytelling and detailed world-building. While there have been writing achievements, she believes there's still “a lot more” to be explored and accomplished.

Kiran said the promise of what one could do on OTT versus what one cannot on the big screen “largely still holds” true, despite the issue of self-regulation.

She said, “Of course, there is a lot of self-censorship, things that we cannot do for audiences, that has come into play now. It wasn’t there during the big boom of American TV writing. It was being able to tell stories in a way that you just cannot in films, with characters opening up, building the world in greater detail, and speaking about different issues was possible.”

“That continues to be the case for quite a large number of industries, but I don't know so much about India, because here, there is also a need to get more audience to migrate to OTT. That successfully happened during COVID,” Kiran said at the 7th edition of the Indian Screenwriters Conference (ISC) hosted by the Screenwriters Association of India (SWA).

The filmmaker noted there was hardly any difference between successful titles of OTT and films, as they are more of the same today.

She said, “Now, more and more you see the kind of things that are so-called 'working' or big on OTT in India are usually stuff which isn't vastly different from what we would see in films. So, the promise of world-building and doing other stuff may not have been (fulfilled). That’s also because I think there has been a bit of a bubble burst.”

“OTT was this golden egg; everyone could do everything that they dreamt of and it had to come full circle. There is a lot of promise there, a lot of stories to be told, I just don't know how many people are commissioning them and the economics allows one to do. Like everything, there was a golden age, but I am not sure where it goes from here. We still have some great writing on OTT in India, but there is a lot more to be done,” she added.

When asked by moderator-writer Mitesh Shah, known for penning Tumbbad, if she plans to start a project for streaming, Rao, said, “Nothing has been greenlit yet. I have a couple of series ideas, including a mini-series, but I don't know where to go with what I am doing. I keep feeling like I want to take the ideas that I wrote for my series and make them into films!”

At the ISC, concluding on Sunday, renowned screenwriters and creators like Shoojit Sircar, C Prem Kumar, Christo Tomy, Hemanth M Rao, Vivek Athreya, Biswapati Sarkar, and Anand Tiwari will share insights into their craft, their most successful works, and how they navigate the industry's evolving landscape and its ‘New Reality.’

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