PremiumNEW DELHI: American streaming platform Netflix will set up its first live-action post-production facility in Mumbai, the company said in a blog dated 2 June. To be fully operational by June 2022, the facility will have 40 offline editing rooms for showrunners, directors, editors and sound designers to be able to work.
Showrunner, essentially a role that has originated in the web series space, refers to a person, apart from the director, writer and producer, who oversees creative and management aspects of the show. Filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane was the showrunner for the last season of Sacred Games.
"We are excited that Mumbai will be home to this wonderful creative space. This reinforces our commitment to India’s entertainment industry as we continue to empower creators with the best resources to tell great stories," Vijay Venkataramanan, director, post-production, Netflix India, said in a statement.
The Reed Hastings-owned company added 3.98 million paid subscriptions in the January to March quarter globally with 1.36 million of these coming from the Asia and Pacific region. While it does not share country-specific numbers, Netflix subscribers in India are estimated to hover around the 4.6 million mark, according to an analysis by Media Partners Asia, an independent provider of research, advisory and consulting services in the Asia Pacific.
Earlier this year, Netflix announced more than 40 originals for 2021, saying that it was looking to expand its slate by nearly three times as compared to 2020 across languages and genres, without disclosing investment figures. Besides extensive local language programming, the service is also trying to penetrate the country with low price plans.
In September 2020, Netflix India partnered Reliance Jio, to offer a free mobile-only subscription to post-paid subscribers for plans starting at $5.3 per month (Rs. 399). The subscribers were offered the option to upgrade to traditional plans. Netflix is also hard-bundled with Jio’s fixed broadband service with free access to subscribers opting for data plans starting at $20 per month (Rs. 1,499). The streaming platform, in July 2020, started testing a $4.7 per month (Rs. 349) ‘mobile plus’ plan in India, which allows single HD streaming on mobile, tablets and laptops.
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