New Delhi: Ajay Devgn’s war drama Bhuj-The Pride of India that started streaming on Disney+ Hotstar last week, will now be available in Tamil and Telugu dubbed versions on the platform.
To be sure, video streaming platforms are fast recognising the diversity of India as a nation and the importance of reaching out to Indians in their own languages. Services, both local and foreign are upping their dubbing game for marquee content. Netflix has earlier brought out international originals like Extraction, A Suitable Boy and The Jungle Book dubbed in Indian languages.
SonyLIV dubbed its popular original Scam 1992-The Harshad Mehta Story into Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam while Disney+ Hotstar had brought out Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Kannada and Malayalam versions of its web series Aarya earlier. Industry experts say the dubbing game is important to reach out to tier-2 and tier-3 towns that services have penetrated into during the covid-19 pandemic with even niche originals gaining mainstream popularity.
Media experts say the extension of web show experiences from an audio perspective beyond subtitles was long overdue. Plus, the strategy takes inspiration from the popular Hollywood studio move of dubbing large-scale superhero and action flicks in Hindi and other languages and even getting Bollywood stars to dub for the same. In the past, Tiger Shroff had dubbed for Tom Holland in the Hindi version of Spider-Man: Homecoming while Varun Dhawan had voiced Marvel’s superhero movie Captain America: Civil War.
People are inherently culturally curious, intrigued by stories from all over the world. Dubbing enables more people to discover and enjoy these great stories, Debra Chinn, director, international dubbing at Netflix had said in an earlier interview to Mint. The Reed Hastings-owned platform currently dubs and subtitles its content in up to 32 languages across the globe.
