In an attempt to enhance its position in one of the world’s fastest-growing entertainment and streaming sectors, Walt Disney Co. is producing a television series that is inspired by an old Indian poem about a feuding dynasty.
Gaurav Banerjee, head of content at Disney+ Hotstar, the company’s Indian digital platform, announced that a retelling of the Mahabharata, a roughly 2,000-year-old Sanskrit poem about two groups of cousins competing for their clan’s throne and kingdom with the help and interference of the Gods, would be released in 2024 at the three-day D23 extravaganza event held by the media giant at the Anaheim Convention Center in California.
Disney is hoping that India will be the home of the world’s longest poem, which has 200,000 verses in its unabridged form and is comparable to the South Asian adaptation of Game of Thrones. This is because streaming platforms are under increasing pressure from investors to demonstrate that they can defy the downward trend in subscriber growth that is currently affecting Netflix Inc. In India during the Covid-19 outbreak, a replay of the “Ramayana” from the 1980s, an ancient story that, like the Mahabharata, is essential to Hinduism, became an unexpected TV blockbuster.
As per Media Partners Asia, “Mythology has always been one of the most popular genres on Indian television,” said Mihir Shah.
“The announcement of Mahabharata on Disney+ Hotstar is a move to extend this success” into the world of online streaming, he added.
Yet it is a tough undertaking for any filmmaker given the vast span of these stories—the “Mahabharata” is about ten times longer than both the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” put together. 94 episodes of the Mahabharata in the 1980s ran from 1988 to 1990. The shorter of the two works, “Ramayana,” was performed over the course of 78 episodes.
According to media sources, during India’s lockdown, up to 51 million viewers tuned into each episode of the Mahabharata, surpassing the 19.3 million who watched the Game of Thrones season finale. The Ramayana currently holds the record with 77 million viewers.
One of India’s most popular directors and SS Rajamouli, known for his signature action-packed epics, revealed to Bloomberg News earlier this year that he was preparing to someday take on a remake of the “Mahabharata.”
Disney is the most popular of the three big overseas streaming services operating in India, with just around 60 million customers. Although Disney lost the exclusive rights to digitally broadcast tournaments already this year to a partnership of Hollywood studio Paramount Global and Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries Ltd., live streaming of cricket, India’s national passion, has been a major driver of that expansion.
By signing up 260 million subscribers by the fiscal year 2024, Disney set a worthy goal that many analysts now doubt it would be able to achieve. The company currently anticipates between 135 million and 165 million “core” Disney+ subscribers, and as many as 80 million subscribers for Disney+ Hotstar in India by then, or a max of 245 million. This information was provided to investors by Chief Financial Officer Christine McCarthy last month.
