Yearender 2022 | Begum of OTT Netflix’s Monika Shergill: ‘Quality storytelling and honest content will always work’

Netflix’s India head, Monika Shergill truly the queen of content. That diversity and being inclusive to all kinds of stories is something which is very important to her. The audiences have experienced a lot of high quality stories from across the world, and their tastes are changing, so she believes that quality stories will always work. Edited excerpts from the interview: How has the year been for you with Netflix? It’s been a terrific year from our content perspective. I mean, if you look at our slate, everything and every kind of story that we have told and the kind of audience it has generated, the kind of conversations it has generated, and the kind of growth we have had this year at Netflix. So it has been a really momentous year and I can go into the titles to just give you a sense. Last year, December is when we dropped Aranyak, which has done so well. As of last night, it has won an award at Filmfare. We had Decoupled, Minnal Murali, Sooryavanshi. And starting this year we had Yeh Kaali Kaali Ankhein and we are deep into making Season 2 for that. Then we had The Fame Game which did so well in India and globally for us. We also had Mai, Darlings, Monica, O My Darling, Jogi, She Season 2, Delhi Crime Season 2, Jamtara, Mismatched Season 2, Khakee: The Bihar Chapter, then Qala came out and we also had CAT. We also had The Indian Predator and Kapil Sharma’s I’m Not Done Yet.   So, at a local, original slate level we have done 27 titles and all of those titles have done so well for us that it has been a defining year from our slate perspective. And we had the price recalibration last December and we knew that we were going to talk through our slate to a broader audience. That was our promise and strategy and we totally delivered on that because all these titles, including our licensed slate which included RRR, Gangubai Kathiawadi, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2, Laal Singh Chaddha, HIT, Ek Villain Returns, and so many others have actually spoken to a very broad audience with very different tastes. So, if I have to just put it in a nutshell, we programmed a very diverse, impactful and must-watch slate. And we are seeing the results of that. Talking about Hollywood releases, what do you have to say about that? They have been great with Netflix this year. We have had a phenomenal year where the Hollywood releases are concerned. We had several Korean releases. If I just look at the international stuff, we had Squid Game, All of Us Are Dead etc, it was a very good year for the Korean shows. And this year, we had Stranger Things 4, Wednesday, which has been a phenomenal hit in such a short span of time and has been growing as we speak. We also had Harry & Meghan, Bridgerton Season 2, Dahmer has been a worldwide rage, The Watcher. In terms of movies we had The Gray Man, The Adam Project, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery which is a brilliant film. Overall, I personally can’t think of any other offering which can even come close to the offerings that we have, which has amazing titles and entertainment from all over the world, and local entertainment which is becoming very powerful and that is something that we are working very hard towards. We are working hard towards making every show and movie a special experience for our audiences. And that’s why we are focusing a lot on quality. At Netflix, one of the most important things that we do is to make sure that we are not going to just do one thing which comes in two or three months and you as an audience have to wait for. What can we look forward to from Netflix for 2023, from the pan-Indian movies, shows, Hollywood, Korean etc? We would love it if you could share some titles too.  As we programme with all our content partners across the globe, each one of us are programming our strongest slate for the coming year. We know what all is coming from every market and I can talk about India. We will have a really strong and highly entertaining slate with a lot of new creators and themes coming onto the service because we believe that novelty is a very important thing that matters in terms of storytelling. We have just announced Mission Majnu with Sidharth Malhotra and Rashmika Mandanna which is coming on Republic Day, January 2023. We have Rana Naidu with Venkatesh and Rana Daggubati. We also have a very important, big and exciting title which is also coming soon, which is Class. We also have Hansal Mehta’s Scoop, Raj and DK’s Guns & Gulaabs, Vishal Bharadwaj’s brilliant film Khufiya, which is based on Amar Bhushan’s book. We have Chakda Express, which Anushka Sharma is headlining and is based on the life of Jhulan Goswami, Zoya Akhtar’s The Archies. We also have a couple of new-age and interesting reality shows, some of them with home-grown formats. To add to what you’d asked about next year, we have a very big south slate coming, along with big Hindi movies this year. So, I think in all across our original offering, our licensed offering in India, local, Hollywood, and international market offerings, I can safely say that we will be having a very powerful and entertaining year for our audiences. I mean, I have visibility into almost all of that, and it is going to be a very momentous one. How is cinema changing with Bollywood not doing well at the box office and we have so many shows and films on Netflix which have women as leads? We have always been conscious about the fact that women do not get enough of a voice in telling their stories and at Netflix this comes from how we are as a service globally also, even as what we are as a company. 50 percent of our leaders are women, and our content teams have women leaders, so stories have to represent the world as they are. Women are 50 percent of the world and why shouldn’t they get their own stories, their way of looking at the world, and that does not mean that there is a gender forward approach, but there is an inclusion forward approach. That diversity and being inclusive to all kinds of stories is something which is very important for us. And where cinema is concerned, I think, cinema is going through slightly uncertain times. But, the audiences have experienced a lot of high quality stories from across the world, and their tastes are changing. We must all learn from that. And we must also remember that quality stories will always work and we are seeing that, the movies that are working, you know, whatever genre they may be, whatever they set out to do, if they have been true to the core and honest with that story, and told it in a high quality way, the audiences will make those films successful. Yes, it is a more challenging period, but I think it is something which will settle eventually, and it will also inspire and that’s a responsibility we carry as, you know, whether it’s as Netflix execs, or as creators in the industry, to actually do more quality storytelling and give better value for the time that our audiences give us. The audience have become very educated with cinema. And thanks to OTT platforms for that. How do you understand the psychology of the audience as to what they want? Audiences currently are looking at a lot of high quality entertainment. They have become more discerning, and more experimental. Language is not a bar for them. Earlier it used to be, but now they’re more open to seeing stories from anywhere. Of course they value their own local stories in their context the most, something that will not change. But they want their local stories to also be recognized globally. As Indians, we put a lot of thought into what is our place in the world. How are we doing, and whether we are watching stories coming to us from elsewhere? Are our stories traveling? And you know, a lot of that is also there, but fundamentally, I think they are appreciating quality. And more and more people are actually understanding that there are quality stories out there and they are actually gravitating towards them. They are talking about them which is creating more conversations and more people join the service. They watch and they talk even more. We are experiencing that journey from title to title, so I think that is something which is very heartening, because as programmers when we make those choices, we want to lean in to what the audience is valuing. So I think we are learning from them every day and they are getting more discerning. Would you be able to share some exciting trends of 2022, which made the content what it is? What was the trend that you were following, and what were the exciting trends that you were looking forward to? Like on an average, our members on Netflix watch six genres in a month. So that’s really mind boggling. It’s so interesting to see that they’re ready to experiment with six genres. Thriller has been an outstanding format, like the genre for us on Netflix India, and globally, I think action and thriller. So I think these specifics we can share with you. Again, more and more people are watching series. Even though it’s a longer format, I think series is something which is catching on a lot, but from an India perspective, I think the viewing of Indian films globally has gone up by 50%. I think that’s a very interesting trend. We love our cinema; in whichever form it comes to us. I think that’s very interesting. Then our documentaries are also being consumed a lot. I say this very humbly, but Netflix has reinvented the documentary format with Harry & Meghan. So there’s a lot of viewing of documentaries. And also, if I were to give you some trends, and this is actually from the media agency reports, that viewing on streaming has gone up by one hour every day. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.