Crime thrillers are an important genre on OTT: MX Player's Gautam Talwar

MX Player launched its latest show Dharavi Bank on November 19. Starring Bollywood actors Suniel Shetty and Vivek Oberoi, the 10-episodes series is the latest addition to the platform's extensive crime thriller genre. While the streamer has drama, comedy and reality content, it has become a go-to destination for the crime-thriller genre.

Gautam Talwar, chief content officer, MX Player, says there is a need gap for this genre and it is only catered to by OTT platforms. 

"Crime thrillers are an important genre on OTT. Audience wants to watch it, but the need gap is not satiated by television or cinema. Television cannot shoot crime the way it should be due to the regulations and cinema is not doing it the way it should," he says. 

Some of its most popular crime shows are Bhaukaal, Matsya Kaand, Chakravyuh and Ek Thi Begum. The second season of Bhaukaal, which was released this year, was watched by over 100 million people. 

Talwar says crime thrillers are among the two genres that always work. The other being comedy. 

In an earlier interview to afaqs! Talwar had said that the next trend in OTT will be genre mashup. "This trend is emerging all across the world. People have begun to experiment with it. It's tough to crack it, but if you do then there is merit in it,” he had said.

Speaking after the launch of the new show, Talwar says, "We have built a beautiful world of Dharavi and an engaging story. Its a fictional tale but very authentic. We are hoping the consumer buys the world in its rightful authenticity."

The show will also be dubbed in Tamil and Telugu. After Hindi, Tamil is the biggest market for the platform. The streamer has a strong focus on regional languages. However, it will prioritise languages based on data.

"We are not going to spread ourselves too thin across India. We are going to prioritise markets based on viewership data," he says.  

Looking back at the year, Talwar says it's show Campus Diaries, which was ranked number one in IMDB's top 10 list of Indian web series, was an eye opener. 

"If you make a piece of content for a very specific audience like 18-24 years and do it well, people will watch it. Its not necessary for it to be a big show. It's not about the scale but about good stories. We also learnt about sensible budgeting- to make entertaining shows but not necessarily scale-driven," he says.