NEW DELHI: Amazon Prime Video will premiere Oscar nominated film Dune on 25 March in English, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, Dune stars Timothee Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Issac, Josh Brolin, Zendaya, Jason Momoa, and Javier Bardem, among others.
American films, television shows, and programmes in Turkish, German and Korean languages, including their dubbed versions, are emerging as a big draw on over-the-top (OTT) video streaming services, accounting for as much as 30% of overall viewership, said senior executives at several of these platforms.
Video streaming platforms are fast recognising the diversity of India as a nation and the importance of reaching out to Indians in their languages. Services, both local and foreign, are upping their dubbing game for marquee content.
Amazon Prime Video had got Arjun Kapoor and Rajkummar Rao to dub for superhero series The Boys 2. Tamil movie industry star Vijay Sethupathi had lent his voice to their animation film Dhira. After Netflix showcased international originals like Extraction, A Suitable Boy and The Jungle Book dubbed in Indian languages, SonyLIV had dubbed its popular original Scam 1992-The Harshad Mehta Story into Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. Disney+ Hotstar had released Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Kannada and Malayalam versions of its web series Aarya.
Industry experts say the dubbing game is important to reach out to tier-two and tier-three towns that services have penetrated into during the covid-19 pandemic with even niche originals gaining popularity.
“Indian audiences have a strong appetite for localized content as can be seen in the success of localized marketing of global content in the country," Sushant Sreeram, director, marketing at Amazon Prime Video for India had said in an earlier interview to Mint.
