Shreyans Hirawat interview by Sandeep Hattangadi
Led by young entrepreneur Shreyans Hirawat, NH Studioz also offers an extensive post-production infrastructure and services set in one of the most accessible localities of Mumbai. It includes a luxurious preview theater, a well-equipped recording studio, multiple edit suites, and other services such as facilitating sound recording, dubbing, and animation. NH Studioz is also in the business of making trailers, dialogue promotions and executes everything that gives the first positive visual impression of a movie. Over the next few months, the company plans to roll out NH Plus App, Release 3 of inhouse Home Productions, Materialize the rest of 3 and Build/ Sign off more projects.
A pioneer in the Indian film industry, Narendra Hirawat &Co. which is a leading copyright aggregator house in India started NH Studioz in 2015 to syndicate Indian content across the world. The platform has a vast library of 1400+ Bollywood as well as regional language titles ranging from a variety of genres such as Drama, Thriller, Comedy, etc.
With the increasing popularity of Indian Cinema in various markets, NH Studioz aims to syndicate it across various platforms like Theatre, TV, and Digital platforms. Starting their journey by acquiring the distribution rights of the critically acclaimed movie ‘Pink’ starring Amitabh Bachchan, NH Studioz has released over 10 movies across genres.
Some of the movies under the NH Studioz distribution network are Shivaay, Dear Zindagi, Begum Jaan and Half Girlfriend. Some of the most recent notables are ‘October’ starring Varun Dhawan, critically acclaimed Raj Kumar Rao starrer ‘Omerta’,Salman Khan’s ‘Tubelight’, Sharukh Khan and Anushka Sharma’s ‘Jab Harry Met Sejal’ and ‘Setters’.
Earlier this year, for the first time, the company forayed into the Telugu film industry with Ram Gopal Varma directorial Lakshmi’s NTR. We took the opportunity to interview Shreyans Hirawat Shreyans Hirawat, of NH STUDIOZ and
he spoke with rare confidence to us. A few excerpts.
Since you have such a big library, will you start a channel too?
Shreyans Hirawat: There is no such plan currently to start off a channel but having said that in order to utilize our existing library and to showcase more content we are soon launching our own OTT as that is more relevant in the new age times
What are the things you look into while acquiring films for distribution?
While acquiring films for distribution, there are a lot of factors that are considered in the following order like, Script of the Film, its Director and Cast and Crew, previously executed films by similar elements and its potential markets
Tell us something about your recent successes in distribution and what are films you have acquired for distribution.
We had distributed Film Prassthanam pre lockdown. And, as the film was a massy Bollywood entertainer, we engaged in various distribution strategies to place it in the right markets. The film had a very huge star cast led by Sanjay Dutt, Jackie Shroff, Ali Fazal, and others. It was challenging as there were a lot of competitive films releasing around the same week. We have now been focusing on productions as we want to be an integral part of the creation stage itself. There is a lot of potential in the future for good content and we have been following the same with an intent to entertain the audiences with meaningful stories
What are your future projects like?
A lot of good content backed by Great makers and talent like Mahesh Manjrekar, Lakshman Utekar, Tusshar Kapoor, Vishal Pandya (Fame of Hate Story Franchise), Biopics, etc,
How do you deal while understanding your father in professional matters?
All the deals include a final approval from him. He is very progressive and has unmatched experience and knowledge. He understands the sensibility of the audiences as well as the distribution channels like broadcasters, OTT players, etc. He has seen the times where the films were only placed in theatres to the DD network of India grow to the Satellite networks coming into today’s OTT players.
What is the reason for acquiring the entire negative rights?
This is the brainchild and pioneering step by my Father as he had realized in 1980 that with the advancement of technology there will always be newer modes and mediums of exploitations. Our company would have not been where it is if we had only focused on acquiring and trading singular rights. Negative rights are like buying the entire plot/ land, Future may behold building a residential/commercial / mall / any kind of space. But, if you do not own the plot, one may not have the scope of monetizing it with changing times and needs. Earlier in 1980, the only way of monetizing films was by releasing them through theatres. From 1980 to 2021 we have seen the Film Industry economy involved from Theatres to Satellite broadcasts to Video CDs to DVDs to Cable to DTH to todays’ OTT.
