Hotstar to stream ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ in regional languages

NEW DELHI: Disney+ Hotstar, the video streaming service owned by Disney India, will stream The Book of Boba Fett, a series part of the Star Wars franchise, a spin-off from The Mandalorian, in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and English, on 29 December.

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. While Amazon Prime Video had got Arjun Kapoor and Rajkummar Rao to dub for superhero series The Boys 2, Tamil movie industry star Vijay Sethupathi lent his voice to their animation film Dhira. After Netflix brought out international originals such as Extraction, A Suitable Boy and The Jungle Book dubbed in Indian languages last year, 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-II and tier-III towns that services have penetrated into during the covid-19 pandemic with even niche originals gaining mainstream popularity.

People are inherently culturally curious, intrigued by stories from all over the world. And dubbing enables more people to discover and enjoy these great stories, Debra Chinn, director, international dubbing at Netflix had said in an earlier interview. The Reed Hastings-owned platform currently dubs and subtitles its content in up to 32 languages across the globe.

“This (dubbing of digital content in multiple Indian languages) is an extension of the strategy adopted by studios for theatrical release," Jehil Thakkar, partner at Deloitte India had pointed out in an earlier interview to Mint.