Amazon Prime Video To Offer 1 Original Content A Month From Next Year

Amazon Prime Video, which already offers 12 originals and is working on 30 more, will be launching one new original Indian content every month in the country from next year, apart from widening its reach from the present nine languages.

The video streaming service from the world’s largest ecommerce player on Tuesday announced the launch of its 13^th original content, The Family Man, which will be available from Friday. Amazon Prime Video, which currently covers 4,000 cities and towns, is targeting the ‘many Indias’ for its faster growth, offers its content in nine languages in—

Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Bengali, Punjabi and Gujarati, apart from English, and is keen to widen this reach. Describing India, which already is its second largest market for Prime, as “the super important market”, Jay Marine, vice-president, Amazon Prime Video for Europe during his first India visit here said they are keen to cover the rest of the key languages here but without offering a timeline or naming those languages.

“India is our super important market where we cover as many as 4,000 cities and towns under three years of operations which began in December 2016. During the past two years alone our viewership time has grown 10 times,” Marine told PTI in an interview during his first visit to the country in his new role, but without ascribing the absolute number.

“On the content side,” he said, “next year will see us offering one new original Indian content every month, adding to our bouquet of 13 India originals. Over the next few years, we will have 30 originals”. About the rising competition and the resultant clutter in the space, Amazon Prime Video India country head Gaurav Gandhi said competition is good as it helps them remain differentiated with their content.

Refusing to offer any customer number or demographic profile of its millions of customers, Gandhi said, “what’s important is that more customers are watching our content-both originals and well as foreign, apart from movies—and the customers are watching more. India is one of our fastest growing markets for us.”

When asked whether they will be offering more user interface in more languages, which currently is limited to Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, Gandhi, answered in the affirmative but without naming which language will be the next in line. On the dozens of movies it offers, Gandhi said, the plan is to reduce to release time to 4-8 weeks from the present 8-12 weeks.

“We are planning our movie release also closer to the window. This is something that we are keen on,” Gandhi said.  Some of its original content include the Inside Edge (its first launch), Breathe, Mirzapur, Made in Heaven, The Forgotten Army,  Hear Me, Love Me, a reality show on virtual blind dating, and Comicstaan among others, and the upcoming Manoj Bajpayee-starrer The Family Man, shot on a mobile phone-a first for the genre.

Then there are also the generous supply of global originals like Jack Ryan and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Marine said one-third of the eyeballs for the Indian originals like Breathe and Mirzapur are overseas.

This space will see more action next year as Apple TV+ has announced a November launch at Rs 99 a month, while Walt Disney will be routing content from its new service Disney+ through Hotstar. Against this, Prime Video pricing begins at Rs 129 for a month and Rs 999 for a year along with Prime service.

Apart from this, Amazon Original Series Four More Shots Please!, Amazon Prime Video has announced that it has greenlit the second season of the show. 

Produced by PritishNandy Communications Ltd and created by Rangita Pritish Nandy, Four More Shots Please! Season Two will see the four girls make radical choices in love, career and friendship. Their choices will put them through the grind, make them question their inner being but will ultimately redefine their lives.

The first season of this Amazon Original Series, which premiered in January this year over 200 countries and territories, was loved by viewers across India and around the world.  

Four More Shots Please! is written by Devika Bhagat with dialogue by IshitaMoitra. The Prime Original Series stars Sayani Gupta, Kirti Kulhari, Bani J and Maanvi Gagroo along with a stellar ensemble cast comprising of Prateik Babbar, Lisa Ray, Milind Soman, Neil Bhooplalam, Simone Singh and Amrita Puri.  Season Two will see some fresh additions to this already stellar star cast. 

(With inputs from PTI)