Hotstar to launch original segment, Hotstar Specials in March

Star India’s digital arm, Hotstar has announced its foray into original content with a segment called Hotstar Specials.

The platform, which launches in March, has tied-up with 15 filmmakers including Salman Khan and Shekhar Kapur for exclusive shows in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Bengali. Other filmmakers that Hotstar has confirmed its association with are Neeraj Pandey, Kabir Khan, Nikkhil Advani, Ram Madhvani, Venkat Prabhu, Sudhir Mishra, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Nagesh Kukunoor, Mahesh Manjrekar, Vishal Furia, Rohan Sippy, Debbie Rao and Sharad Devarajan.

While Hotstar leads the way in the digital space in India, rival companies like Netflix, Amazon, Voot and ZEE5 are getting aggressive with original content.

Hotstar Specials will feature a range of Indian stories “mounted on a big scale, unconstrained by format”, it said. “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,” said Sanjay Gupta, the Managing Director of Star India. “With Hotstar Specials we hope to create the biggest Indian stories delivered to a billion screens.”