Aha, the Telugu OTT platform, officially launched its Tamil wing, Aha Tamil, with an event on Friday. The upcoming content on the platform was also unveiled at the event, which was attended by many celebrities, including Anirudh Ravichander, SJ Suryah, Nikki Galrani, RB Choudary, Jayam Ravi, and KS Ravikumar.
Aha Tamil has bagged the post-theatrical streaming rights of actor Karthi’s upcoming film Sardar and its slate includes the web series Pettakkali, which has filmmaker Vetri Maaran attached as showrunner and is based on jallikattu, among many other films and shows. Sardar is directed by PS Mithran, and Allu Arvind said, on Friday, that it is one of the big films coming to Aha.
The OTT platform has also bagged the post-theatrical rights of Sila Nerangalil Sila Manidhargal, which was released in theatres in January. The hyperlink film features an ensemble star cast comprising of Ashok Selvan, Nasser, KS Ravikumar, Riythvika, Manikandan and Bhanupriya, among others.
Aha which, so far, has been rolling out content only in Telugu, was founded by veteran Telugu producer-distributor Allu Aravind in February 2020. It boasts a catalogue that includes acclaimed films like Love Story and Senapathi, and the talk show Unstoppable with NBK, hosted by Nandamuri Balakrishna.
We earlier reported that Aha Tamil had bagged the post-theatrical streaming rights of the Samuthirakani-starrer Writer. On Friday, Aha Tamil premiered both Writer and the web series Akash Vaani. While Writer is a crime drama produced by Pa Ranjith that was released theatrically in December 2021, Akash Vaani is a romantic comedy web series, starring Kavin and Reba Monica John.
Aha will also be premiering Irai, the OTT debut of Radikaa Sarathkumar’s banner Radaan Mediaworks. The crime thriller series stars Sarathkumar and is directed by Rajesh M Selva. It will premiere on the platform on Friday, February 18.
Aha Tamil will also host a reboot of the late 90s and early 2000s television series Ramany Vs Ramany, titled Ramany Vs Ramany 3.0. The family drama series will retain actor Ramji in the lead role as Mr Ramany, while Vasuki Anand will play Mrs Ramany. Ponni Suresh will essay their daughter Ragini and Param Guhanesh, their son Ram. The series will be directed by Naga and produced by Kavithalayaa, whose TV division, Minbimbangal, produced the original show.
Another show premiering on Aha Tamil is Mad Company, which has director Balaji Mohan on board as the creative producer. Written and directed by debutant Vignesh Vijaykumar, a former associate of Balaji, it is touted as an urban comedy-drama, starring actors Prasanna, SPB Charan, Dhanya Balakrishna, Kaniha, and Suresh Chakravarthy. The shooting for this series was recently completed.
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When announcing that the web series Pettakkali, directed by La Rajkumar and produced by Vetri Maaran, will be part of Aha Tamil’s line-up, Allu Arvind noted that though big directors generally hesitate to do OTT projects, Vetri Maaran came on board without any hesitation. “When we approached him, our intention was to make a series that is very native to Tamil culture,” he added.
Calling this OTT boom period a “golden era” for writers, Vetri Maaran said, “Filmmaking will always be there, but the medium will change. While there will be directors who continue to make films for theatres, other filmmakers will have liberty to explore various genres and express themselves on other platforms with fewer limitations.”
The filmmaker added that director Rajkumar researched about jallikattu for two years and first made a documentary, which he then turned into a series.
