PremiumLove Storiyaan’s Somen Mishra reveals shocking Karan Johar - 'Our complete budget was equal to one song of Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani' | Exclusive
Love Storiyaan is a docu-series on Amazon Prime Video, created by Somen Mishra and backed by Karan Johar.
Last Updated: 09.38 PM, Feb 20, 2024
The latest offering on Amazon Prime Video right now is a documentary series titled Love Storiyaan, which brings to us six love stories of real-life people who have fought odds to keep the fire between them alive. The show explores six couples who have fought taboos that were against their love. Be it a woman in an abusive marriage or a Dalit woman falling for a Brahmin man, a couple fighting the condition created by a war in a foreign landscape, and so on. What is even more fascinating is the fact that this show is backed by Karan Johar, who has been attached to a certain brand of films.
Somen Mishra, who is the Content Head at Dharmatic (the digital wing at Dharma) and the showrunner and creative producer for Love Storiyaan had a lovely insight to share about how docuseries. The producer spoke about where the idea came from, what exactly motivated them, and how Karan Johar was shocked listening to the budget that was required to make this entire anthology.
Somen Mishra On Dharma 2.0
In our exclusive conversation when asked about how people are shocked looking at the content of Love Storiyaan and seeing Karan Johar back it, Somen Mishra said, “A lot of times that happens actually. There are two parts to it. Dharma is known for a certain brand of big-budget romantic films. But you know we have gone ahead of that, I mean one of the first films I worked with Dharma when I was with Junglee it was Raazi, and it doesn’t look like a Dharma film. Then Shakun (Batra) made Kapoor & Sons, they said ‘Oh, this doesn’t look like a Dharma film.’”
He added, “So anything wherever we deviate, be it hardcore acting like Kesari or this year we have Kill, which you will go ‘is this a Dharma film’, people won’t believe that. So those things keep happening and coming and that’s the idea to do more things and various kinds of things. So we don’t away saying whether this is Dharma or not.”
On talking about how the idea turned into a docuseries on Amazon Prime Video, Somen Mishra said, “The idea for Love Storiyaan, the Indian Love Project page is such a lovely page, every day we wake up and read those stories. A lot of these stories were about the people we knew but we didn’t know their stories. That was the germ of an idea and we pitched that to Amazon. We first thought we would do a fiction series, but there is a lot of fiction happening, we also did Ajeeb Daastaans. The idea was how to present these people who are real and have fought against all odds. So we pitched it as a docuseries and Amazon jumped on it as they didn’t have anything like this on the roster.”
Karan Johar Reaction On Budget:
Further in the conversation Somen Mishra spoke about Karan Johar getting shocked by the budget of the anthology that was very less. “Karan (Johar) was already shocked by the budget when he told him what we were getting from Amazon. Karan asked ‘iss budget mein filmein banti hain? (Are films made with this budget?)’ I said of course. Like I remember telling someone that the combined budget of all our six films is less than the budget of one song of Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahaani. Either less than or equal to, I guess, it will be less than. Because Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahaani has big songs. Big studios, 200 plus people on sets.”
“So Karan was very excited and he loved the concept. It is also about Dharma 2.0, how do you make much more varied content that doesn’t get labeled in a certain bracket. Though people are saying we have Dharmafied the docuseries, but that was the idea. If you are doing romantic stories, they should look gorgeous and I am proud of what the six directors have managed to deliver with the resource and days crunch,” added Somen.
Love Storiyaan is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Stay tuned to OTTplay for more on this and everything else from the world of streaming and films.