Hoichoi, Bengali-language streamer, launches studio

Leading Bengali-language streamer Hoichoi is expanding into the feature film production business with Hoichoi Studios.

The new studio plans to use the learnings gleaned from six years as a streaming operator and will curate stories hitherto confined to that space as theatrical releases. Some three to five theatrical releases are being planned per year.

The first project under Hoichoi Studios will be “Shri Swapankumar-er Badami Hyena’r Kobole,” directed by Debaloy Bhattacharya, inspired from the cult pulp detective stories of author Samarendranath Pandey, better known by his pen name Shri Swapankumar. The film will feature popular actor Abir Chatterjee in the lead as detective Deepak Chatterjee, along with veteran actor Paran Bandyopadhyay as the writer Swapankumar.

The film will commence principal photography later this month and will release in November during the Kali Puja holiday frame.

Hoichoi is already involved in series production and will continue to make 25-30 original series every year. The streamer is a division of Shree Venkatesh Films whose film production business SVF Entertainment will continue to run as a separate entity. Hoichoi Studios is headed by COO Soumya Mukherjee, who will also serve as a producer.

Mukherjee said: “The trust of our consumers across geographies is what acted as a catalyst behind the culmination of the Hoichoi Studios, our new wing. We wanted to entertain and serve our audience by expanding to a new format.”

Chatterjee added: “I hope Hoichoi after being so much loved by the audience in the world of OTT [streaming], will garner the same amount of love as it ventures into a new format of storytelling with Hoichoi Studios.”

Bhattacharya said: “The feeling of creating the first content for Hoichoi Studios itself comes with a lot of excitement. What is adding more to this is to be able to create a film with such a famous Bengali character who is so full of pulp and thrill.” Variety