Anubhav Sinha is in no hurry to venture into making an OTT series anytime soon. The Mulk (2018) and Article 15 (2019) director shares, “I have a lot of pressure from my team to come up with a series but I’m in no race to do what everyone else is doing.”

However, the filmmaker, who will be shooting his next project in Lucknow soon, admits that he is open to the idea of OTT. “When I find something very exciting and apt for the platform, then I will surely make one or will produce it,” he tells us, adding, “Now that I have become a writer-director, I prefer to go forward when I have a story! Currently, I am taking up projects which have a voice and are related to our society. That’s more the reason that I started to write or co-write, own the project and then execute it to my best ability.”

Sinha’s last film, Thappad (2020) released two weeks before the cinemas shut down due to the pandemic. Two years after, he feels the scenario regarding releasing projects has changed.

“It’s going to be very difficult to find a good reasonable release window. We have around 5,500 screens and fighting for it is the huge backlog of Hindi, Hollywood and now the dubbed south films as well. South films, too, eye for a pan-India release now, especially after the success of Anubhav Sinha (2021). So, it will not be easy to get a solo release. Big films are pitched against each other in the coming months,” he says.

Sinha, however, is not concerned about the fate of cinemas, which he feels will certainly co-exist with the streaming ecosystem. “In West, we have so many big OTT platforms with big-budget content on them. But cinemas still exist. India is no different. So, it will be on a case-to-case basis, and films that are made for cinematic experience will surely hit the theatre first,” he asserts.

Having shot two films in the pandemic, Sinha, 56, has multiple projects lined up. “Anek and Bheed are ready for release. Then, I have director Hansal Mehta’s Faraaz and Ratna’s (Sinha, his wife) film that we have produced. It’s an anthology that I will be shooting in Lucknow after Sudhir Mishra’s story segment is completed. My comedy film Abhi Toh Party Shuru Hui Hai (shot in 2018) is also completed, and we hope it will also release soon, but probably with a new title.”

He also hints that his next project will again be a film he is writing. “But, before that I will take a break, as I have started feeling that I am overworked now,” he ends.