With an eye on Lok Sabha polls, Eros Now to stream web series on PM Modi in April

Narendra Modi is trending not only in politics but also in the entertainment world — with a movie and web series releasing in April. While the trailer of PM Narendra Modi came out earlier this week, the trailer for the 10-part web series — Modi: Journey of a Common Man was launched on March 26.

For Eros Now, that is massively focusing on originals, the idea behind the Modi web series was to bring the story of the leader of the country to the people. “People are curious to know his story. And anyone in power in the country, whether a leading sportswoman, or anyone who sort of has a position of power is always intriguing, especially when you know what they have become from nothing,” said Ridhima Lulla, chief content officer, Eros Group.

The web series will stream in April. However, the date is yet to be announced.

But will Modi’s life and journey get repetitive for the audience? According to Lulla, the series on Modi is life of Modi before he became prime minister. It is looking at three parts of his (Modi’s) life, from childhood to teenagehood and the point when he started working towards becoming a prime minister.
"So, it is more of a personal journey we are looking at rather than a political one. We think it will be interesting for people to see because we have always seen him in a very political side.”

While the film PM Narendra Modi is facing a lot of flak due to the timing of the film, which the Opposition parties are calling politically motivated, the makers believe that elections could generate the curiosity around political leaders and that could spell good news for the film.

Similarly, Lulla believes that “during the election, something like this may get noticed because he is the prime minister but we are looking at it from content standpoint”.

The streaming platform, that has over 12,000-plus movies, has invested $50 to 70 million for original content and has plans to bring to the platform 100 shows in the next 18 months.

"We just launched a series called Flip," she said, which is an anthology of four stories, created by Bejoy Nambiar, starring Ranvir Shorey, Shruti Marathe, Arjun Mathur, Shweta Basu Prasad, Jim Sarbh, Sheetal Menon, Viraf Patel and Sandeepa Dhar which started streaming from March 23.

Another series Flesh, a female-led human trafficking drama produced by Siddharth Anand and directed by Danish Aslam, will come out in the next couple of months.  

“We are doing a lot in crime thriller, mythology, sci-fi,” said Lulla.

She added that the company has already launched about eight originals, including The Investigation, Tumse Na Ho Paaiga, Operation Cobra, Metro Park, Date Gone Wrong and Paaisa Fekh Tamasha Desh.