Talk: The OTT Ways Of Young Telugu Heroes

Just three years ago, when some young Telugu heroes were repeatedly asked at media conferences if they were getting ready for their OTT debut, some of them used to say that OTT could still wait, as they had much to do on the silver screen in theatres. However, times have changed quickly, and now every star is looking forward to doing an OTT project, provided that it will either test their acting potential or give them a new lease of life.

Joining this brigade from the Telugu film industry, among the young and happening stars is none other than Naga Chaitanya, who teamed up with Vikram K Kumar for the “Dootha” web series. Then the likes of other younger stars like Sandeep Kishan, Tiruveer, Nandu, and other actors took OTT as an advantage to showcase their talents. Then came Rana Daggubati and Venkatesh (the senior star) doing a webseries for Netflix. That changed the whole game for sure. Now they are joined by the likes of Kiran Abbavaram and other Tier2 heroes, who are doing films and OTT series in parallel. Teja Sajja is likely to host Amazon’s Telugu version of reality show Traitors.

On the other hand, while bigger stars like Shahid Kapoor are doing OTT series in Bollywood, Telugu film industry is yet to see the likes of Allu Arjun, Jr NTR, Ram Charan and Nani doing one. However, some of them are actually hosting reality shows, and hosted a season or two, but most of them haven’t yet done anything that’s fully OTT-type. But who knows, they might do in the near future.