After making impactful shows for OTT like Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story (2020), Criminal Justice (2019- present) and Black Warrant (2025), content studio Applause Entertainment is now planning to expand its theatrical releases by collaborating with acclaimed directors like Imtiaz Ali and Kabir Khan for a romantic and sports-drama, respectively.
Applause Entertainment completed eight years in business in August and Sameer Nair, the managing director, is happy with the performance of the company's recent shows like Vikramaditya Motwane's Black Warrant, Nagesh Kukunoor's The Hunt: The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination, and season four of Pankaj Tripathi-led Criminal Justice.
Sameer said the studio has 60 OTT shows to its credit and five to six films including Vidya Balan-starrer Do Aur Do Pyaar (2024), Zwigato (2022) featuring Kapil Sharma, and Tahira Kashyap Khurrana's directorial venture Sharmajee Ki Beti (2024).
"We would like to be regarded as one of India's largest content producers with regard to series, and would like to become one of India's largest film studios. For which we need to work hard, develop materials, work with the right talent,' Sameer told PTI in an interview.
"We've a lot of subsequent seasons coming up of all the shows we have done. Our big plan now is to foray into movies, and to get into theatrical movies then go to streaming. About all the movies we do apart from the series, our business model operates on invest and reinvest, so we keep reinvesting into the business," he added.
Applause Entertainment is engaging with a lot of directors and actors, and at the moment the studio has three to four films in the pipeline in both Hindi and a Tamil movie, Bison.
"We are going to do Imtiaz Ali's next movie, we are doing two movies with Kabir Khan, a big Tamil movie comes out in Diwali, called Bison by Mari Selvaraj and Pa Ranjith (who is producing it). Imtiaz always tells gut-wrenching stories from the heart, like a love story so that's what that will be doing. It has Diljit (Dosanjh), Vedang (Raina), Sharvari, and others," Nair said.
"Kabir is working on two things which we've not yet announced but we are currently working on. It will be how Kabir makes (his films). Kabir is a wonderful storyteller, one is a sports movie, it is based on a true story,” he said.
