BANGALORE: Asianet’s Kannada GEC Suvarna is set to present Kannada television’s first daily mythological serial – Shivaleelamrutha.
Airing from 9 June, the serial is based on legendary stories of the Hindu deity Shiva.
Shivaleelamrutha will be telecast Monday to Friday, between 9 and 9.30 pm. It will replace Puranik’s historical daily serial ‘Sangoli Rayanna’ which has been moved to the weekend slot at the same time. The channel has roped in construction house Kristal as lead sponsor.
Producer-director Suneel Puranik has already canned 30 episodes (each 22-23 minutes long) of what could be a mega-opus spanning 260 episodes. The first phase calls for about 80 episodes.
“We are spending about Rs 150,000 per episode. If successful, we will extend it beyond 260 episodes,” informed Puranik while speaking to Indiantelevision.com. Puranik is the CEO of production house Samruddhi.
Each episode of a mythological like Shivaleelamrutha takes about three days to complete, as against two episodes per day for conventional serials, revealed Puranik. “One scene of around 4 minutes with animation and SFX, the background graphics, etc. took a whole day for composing, rendering and finishing,” added Puranik to stress that directing a mythological serial is a different ball game altogether as compared to conventional television content.
That Suvarana is betting big on this serial to bring in sagging ratings is obvious from the fact that it has set aside a Rs 6 million advertisement budget to be spent over 60 days. A big budget Kannada film spends less than this for marketing and advertisement, informs an industry source. Suvrana has booked 200 billboards across Karnataka and as well ads on major local newspapers across Karnataka to promote the serial.
Promos will run on both its channels – Suvarana and Suvarana News. The channel proposes to have radio jingles too. At present it is considering AIR, since the major Kannada stations in the city address a yuppie and younger generation, rather than the more serious Kannadiga. However, it has still not completely kept these stations off its radio advertisement radar altogether.
Cost of production has been the main inhibiting factor that has prevented the production of mythological serials in Karnataka. The Kannada industry does not permit dubbing of other language films and serials into Kannada. Hence, the Kannadiga has been deprived of mythological fare in the local lingo.
NDTV Imagine proved lucky with Ramayan and has restarted the trend with other GECs following suit. Suvarna hopes to repeat the same success recipe with Shivaleelamrutha in the state of Karnataka.
