You can call him a book nerd for good reason. Mumbai-based Sidharth Jain, the founder of India’s first story company,
The Story Ink, has made a career out of turning intellectual property such as books into scripts for the big and small screens.
One of the big ones in his kitty presently is the classic Inspector Ghote series by HRF Keating, which is in the process of being adapted into a multi-part detective drama. “Good stories need to be told and it’s my job to pick the needle out of a haystack,” he says.
It was two years ago when Jain buckled down to the task of becoming an enabler between publishers and producers.
Initially, it was he who reached out to authors. When the word about his success went around, tables turned.
“Many authors today come to me as they’re keen on their books being turned into films. It fetches them name and fame. Money quickly follows. Because stories are best found in books, turning to them for inspiration is only a wise thing,” says the serial entrepreneur with an experience of 15 years as a development producer.
Screen adaptations of books is not new to the Indian screen but these have been largely based on mythological shows, classics, or bestsellers, keeping the remaining literary pool untapped. Content, in the past decades, has followed a cookie-cutter approach with sob soaps ruling the small screen and big-ticket films dominating theatres.
“Little attention was given to individuality and diversity of stories. The only consideration was signing a big star,” he says. “But streaming giants have changed the game. They demanded better content and this has given audiences new things to sample,” he says.
Jain is busy as a beaver today. He’s set up close to 100 book deals in the last two years, enabling writers/authors to draw the road map for their book-to-film journey. One such being The Maharaja Mysteries by author Arjun Raj Gaind in collaboration with Endemol Shine Group.
“While this will release later this year, the first two books in the series that we’re working on are A Very Pukka Murder and Death at the Durbar,” says Jain.
Another is Trial by Fire by Neelam and Shekhar Krishnamoorthy, in addition to Anand Neelakantan’s Vanara, amongst others.
He also writes and not too long ago, he developed a concept for a fantasy historical fiction which has been picked up by a producer from the UK, and will be made into an international series. But before that, he’s completely ‘booked’ with authors back home.