Desi names sidelined on OTT?

In the last year, five leading OTT platforms curated and produced around 100 Hindi content (a mix of fiction, non-fiction, long formats, films, and anthologies). A peek at the list, we observe that 38 shows had a Hindi title, while 45 had an English title; the rest were either a mix of Hinglish words or character names. 45 per cent of the digital shows made for the Hindi audience had an English title!

What’s in a name? This is a question we have been dwindling with for aeons, however, the director of Decoupled Hardik Mehta, describes titles being the first element to intrigue the audience. He adds, “Sometimes shows don’t have the greatest faces, so titles become everything. People will give an opportunity to the trailer or the pilot only if they find the title interesting. It shouldn’t be something that people don’t understand at the first go.”

This year 43 Hindi projects were made from January to August by the top 5 streaming platforms. Out of the pool, 16 projects had Hindi titles, 20 had English titles and the rest were miscellaneous. Evidently, there is a fascination with English titles. Director of Tabbar, Ajitpal Singh, calls this rut of picking Roman names for Hindi projects ‘an Indian phenomenon’. He explains, “English is looked upon as an aspirational language. Most mainstream filmmakers are more comfortable with the English language as they think and work in English. Internationally if you see, Money Heist has a Spanish title, while Squid Games has a Korean title.”

Ironically, desi titles do grab the numbers. As per Ormax Media’s mid-year review for 2022, Rudra, Aashram 3, and Panchayat 2 have been the top three most watched Hindi shows in India. In the same study, Gehraiyaan and Kaun Pravin Tambe? have been listed as the most watched films in the country. Furthermore, Dhamaka was featured in the top 10 global list for the non-English film, and Aranyak was in the top 10 in series across 13 countries on Netflix.

But English titles like Sacred Games, The Family Man, and Scam 1992 are said to have a lot more takers.

Good Luck Jerry’s director Sidharth Sen admits picking English titles comes ‘naturally’ to him. He adds, “OTT is the new generation’s medium. They love to use those slangs and titles. This is not a place where they would like to hear Sasural Simar Ka (TV show).”

Deepak Dhar, CEO, Banijay Asia, a production house active on both small screen and digital front, with titles like Tribhanga, Dahan, Matysakand and Ranveer Vs Wild with Bear Grylls to the credit- breaks it down for us: “Every medium has a defined basic demographic. Television is a mass platform appealing to a mature set of target audience. OTT platforms appeal to a younger demographic.” Ask Dhar what they look for before finalising the titles and he discloses, “It isn’t pre-defined to have Hindi titles for TV and English ones for OTT platforms, we adopt a more targeted approach. We follow a simple process where the team gets together to chart out the landscape, target audience, and focused geography of the show to decide who we are trying to appeal to.”

In this process, actors aren’t much involved, actor Amol Parashar divulges. “Most of the names have already been decided, unless the title is changed at the last minute, there might be a casual conversation. But the final call is always of the makers,” he shares.

Rocket Boyz’s Ishwak Singh believes titles are “like ornamentation”. “The audience wants good content. A good title makes a solid structure more appealing but in absence of the structure it has no meaning,” shares the actor.

On a parting note, however, Ajitpal Singh hopes makers take a leaf from shows like Squid Games, and Money Heist. He suggests, “We should also look for more Hindi and other regional language names for our shows, and provide an English title for the global audiences.”