EXCLUSIVE: Hot on the heels of launching Netflix police drama Black Warrant, India’s Applause Entertainment has struck a two-picture deal with 83 and Ek Tha Tiger director Kabir Khan.
The pact will see Applause and Kabir Khan Films co-produce a pair of features, with Bollywood blockbuster maker Khan at the helm as director and creative production lead on both. No further details of the pics yet, but Applause Managing Director Sameer Nair said the partnership is “fuelled by our mutual love for storytelling.”
“This collaboration with Applause is a natural fit as we both share a passion for stories that resonate with people at their core,” added Khan. “The beauty of this partnership lies in the creative freedom it offers, and I’m thrilled to embark on this exciting journey with Sameer and his incredible team.”
Khan began his directing career in 2006 with adventure thriller Kabul Express, and went on to helm the likes of post 9/11 racial profiling thriller New York, the first YRF Spy Universe film Ek Tha Tiger, comedy-drama Bajrangi Bhaijaan and cricket pic 83. Last year, he directed biographical sports drama Chandu Champion about India’s first Paralympic gold medallist, Murlikant Petkar.
“At Applause, our vision is to collaborate with powerful creative voices to tell stories that are unique, distinctive and popular, and resonate with audiences in meaningful ways,” said Nair. “We look forward to exciting times ahead with Kabir.”
This deal is part of a longer-term strategy at Aditya Birla Group-backed Applause to build out a slate of films. Primarily known for TV shows and streaming dramas, Nair said features had become “a big focus to complement our series slate.”
The deal comes as Applause’s Hindi-language drama series Black Warrant nestles nicely in Netflix’s Global Top 10 non-English shows chart after launching on January 10. Along with Paatal Lok Season 2 on Prime Video, it has handed Indian drama series a strong start to 2025 despite murmurs in the market about budgets falling amid streamer conservatism.
Speaking to Deadline, Nair said Black Warrant had “opened really well and gave Applause a great start to the new year.” It has had a “wonderful reaction from all sorts of people,” he added.
The show, based on Sunil Gupta and Sunetra Choudhury’s 2019 non-fiction book ‘Black Warrant: Confessions of a Tihar Jailer’, comes from Vikramaditya Motwane and is about Gupta’s time as a young jailer at the infamous Tihar Prisons complex in Delhi. “It’s a piece of contemporary history,” said Nair, whose company is known for delving into India’s past for shows such as the Scam crime franchise and the upcoming Gandhi biopic series.
Billed as a crimson thriller, Black Warrant also combines elements of a coming-of-age story for the young Gupta, played by Zahan Kapoor, with workplace comedy tropes added in. “In a way, it’s a coming-of-age story for India, as it traverses the ’80s, the ’90s and the 2000s,” said Nair. “It’s a big expanse of time, and we have only done the first five years, so we have some distance to go, with really interesting new actors.
Applause, which makes the show alongside Andolan Production and Confluence Media, is hoping for more seasons for the show, with “many more stories to tell from a good cast of characters” that also includes Rahul Bhat, Paramvir Singh Cheema and Anurag Thakur. “The book has another 25 years of history, and while it will never move from Tihar, it is the story of jailer over the years as different colorful characters come in and out, and the storytelling is not episodic and is more seralized with progression as it goes along.”
The show was developed using Applause’s usual style of acquiring the IP, financing development and entering production before selling the finished product to a streamer, in this case Netflix. “It was love at first sight for [Netflix India execs] Tania Bami and Monika Shergill, and they had a window of opportunity, so we moved very fast on it,” said Nair. “The work was done the Applause way.”
While the mega-budgets of the early streaming boom in India appear to be gone, Applause has managed to circumvent the downturn in work by sticking to topics and production approaches that work for the mass market and retain a sheen of quality. Nair said Applause would continue to follow its business model, despite the risks of producing before greenlight, but admitted the biggest risk in his approach was the first season, when cancellation is most likely. “We have made lots of subsequent seasons,” he said. “The minute the first season is a success, that’s a lot of the work done.”
More broadly, though, he has identified the change. “The Indian market is changing, like the rest of the world, and a lot of the ultra-premium, super-expensive shows the streamers were making over the last five years will slow down, rightfully so. We were never really in that bracket and have been more reasonable in our expenditure. We’re not in competition with anyone, we just look for what the platforms want.”
He noted that Netflix had been aware of Black Warrant for several years, but the fact Applause could bring the streamer a package tied in a bow actually increased its chances of pick-up. “We did two-and-a-half year of heavy lifting and could bring them a finished product that they could act on quickly. In a sense, we help the process rather than compete.”
Nair, who led Star India for 12 years and helped NBCUniversal launch NDTV in India in the early-to-mid 2000s, said that the TV market was no more or less difficult for producers than it had been when he was on the other side of the desk taking pitches. “There were lots of people who wanted to pitch to me, and couldn’t, but there were lots of people who didn’t know me initially who got a lot of business out of me,” he said. “There is always going to be struggle in the process and the heartbreak of it all. That’s the business you get into.”
Of more concern is raising and attracting capital for productions, he added. “Capital that believes in the creative process and wants to create content that can later be put out theatrically or on TV benefits the industry. That’s how the U.S. used to work, and other places like Britain have worked like that. Within all the creativity, you must never forget the financial responsibilities.”
