Telugu web series: The best is yet to start

Digital giants like Amazon, Netflix have been shelling out crores of money from the past few years to produce unique content that is high on quality. These players reached into the smallest countries and are having millions of subscribers all over the globe. Competing with these giants is completely impossible as they have vast content that appeals to wider sections of the audience. With the sudden rise in the number of subscribers in India, several Tollywood producers planned digital platforms and some of them are keen to produce web series.

Allu Aravind floated Aha and some other businessmen, producers are in plans to announce their own digital streaming platforms soon. Frankly saying, none of the Telugu based web series impressed the audience in the recent times. It needs a lot of effort, time, budgets and creative ideas for a web series to shape out. Neeraj Pandey’s team worked for over a year on the script of Special Ops. Anushka Sharma paid salaries for a year and half for the writers to complete the script of Paatal Lok.

Our filmmakers are busy filling the space with a number of projects instead of picking up interesting scripts. Directors like Krish and Maruthi too worked on web series and the content, writing sounded pale and they failed to live up the expectations. Some of the enthusiastic and desperate writers are busy watching Netflix and Amazon to generate new ideas instead of showing their creative skills. Several Tollywood directors are now working on web-based films and web series utilizing the coronavirus break. Right from the writing to the presentation, making a web series is completely different from directing a movie.

Instead of rushing with a number of projects, Telugu writers, producers and directors should spend ample time on the scripts. They have to predict the taste of the Telugu audience who are watching OTT content. After locking the right script, finding a director who can handle the script is the other biggest challenge. Hope our filmmakers come up with some exciting stuff in the coming years before the audience loses hope on web series based in Telugu.