Editor's Choice

If it was good then why did Priyadarshan remake it, and if i

Published

2 hours ago

September 18, 2026

Johal

If it was good then why did Priyadarshan remake it, and if i

Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk

“If it was good then why did Priyadarshan remake it, and if it was good then why did he make it like this?” — Harry Johal

There’s a real question buried in these reviews that goes beyond bad filmmaking. When you remake your own film shot-for-shot, you’re not just being lazy — you’re saying something about how you view your audience. You’re betting they won’t notice, or won’t care, or won’t have access to the original. That’s contempt dressed up as commerce.

But what’s more interesting to me is what happened to Akshay Kumar’s choice here. Both reviewers agree his performance has moments, but he’s been relegated to a supporting role in his own film. That’s not a creative accident. That’s a structural collapse. You hire two of your biggest stars, you give one of them a blind character with all this potential — the sensory compensation, the daredevil physicality — and then you don’t actually use any of it. You just have him stand there and look intense.

The real failure isn’t that Haivaan is a bad remake. It’s that Priyadarshan didn’t remake anything. He copied. There’s a difference between honoring an original and duplicating it, and somewhere in that gap is where actual filmmaking happens. These reviewers watched a film that forgot to cross that gap.

Editor’s Thought Of The Moment — Harry Johal, Studio CarryOnHarry

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Prime Video India’s August-September slate: a cop drama, a reality reboot and a Carnatic music saga

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Editor's Choice

Prime Video India’s August-September slate: a cop drama, a reality reboot and a Carnatic music saga

Published

6 hours ago

September 18, 2026

Johal

Prime Video India’s August-September slate: a cop drama, a reality reboot and a Carnatic music saga

Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk

Prime Video India has laid out a run of new titles for late summer into early September, with release dates now attached to eight projects spanning Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and English-language programming, according to the platform’s own announcement.

The slate leads with Babita Singh Reporting, premiering August 28. The film, helmed by Ambiecka Pandit with a script by Amita Vyas and starring Nimisha Sajayan, centers on a suspended cop in a small town probing her childhood friend’s death, a case that according to the announcement forces her to reckon with the choices that have shaped her own life. Independent plot details indicate her character, Baby, takes on a fabricated charge to secure leave for a family event in Rewa, where she reconnects with the friend whose death she later investigates. Barun Sobti and Anshumaan Pushkar round out the cast, with Sudip Sharma — known for writing Paatal Lok — serving as executive producer. The film is produced by Film Squad Productions in association with Act Three.

Reality programming makes up a large share of the announcement. Season 2 of The Traitors launches August 13 under Karan Johar’s hosting, with Dharmatic Entertainment and All3Media International at the production helm and fresh episodes arriving each Thursday. The Indian edition has already built a following through its first season, and the format’s global track record — built on a game of hidden identities and shifting alliances among 21 celebrity contestants this time around — has made it one of the platform’s more closely watched returning titles. Playground Season 5, India’s gaming reality competition from MX Player by Prime Video, follows August 1 with a new three-mentor structure: Elvish Yadav, Tejasswi Prakash and Aarush Bhola each lead a team across a six-week competition the platform describes as turning the house itself into part of the game.

On the drama side, Jagamae Sangeetham premieres September 4 in Telugu, with Tamil dubs and English subtitles rolling out across more than 240 countries and territories. Directed by Palnati Surya Pratap and produced by Sushmita Konidela’s Gold Box Entertainment, the series stars Prakash Raj, Madhubala and Meka Srikanth in a story centered on a young musician navigating his grandfather’s Carnatic music legacy amid family secrets and old rivalries. The announcement notes music by Vishal Chandrasekar complements a concept inspired by the earlier Hindi original Bandish Bandits.

Vadhandhi Season 2 — The Mystery of Mani, the Tamil crime thriller franchise’s return, premieres August 6 with dubs in Telugu and Hindi and subtitles in 15 languages. Set during Madurai’s Jallikattu festival season, the eight-episode run follows a police officer investigating skeletal remains unearthed during a highway inauguration. Andrew Louis returns as creator, writer and director, with M. Sasikumar leading a cast that includes Yashwanth, Anagha Maruthora and Aparna Das.

Rounding out the announced titles, We Got You Girl, a 15-episode lifestyle series hosted by Barkha Singh and Aisha Ahmed alongside etiquette coach Manik Kaur, begins releasing three episodes weekly starting August 18 on MX Player by Prime Video. Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya, a comedy starring Kay Kay Menon as a headmaster at a troubled school, was also named in the announcement, though full release details were not included in the material provided.

For Studio CarryOnHarry, the more interesting story here isn’t any single title but the range: a strategy balancing acclaimed regional narratives, established competition franchises, and mobile-native lifestyle programming via MX Player targeting younger viewers. Whether that breadth pays off in engagement across such different viewer bases is the thing worth watching over the next few months.

Studio CarryOnHarry Perspective

The Traitors thrives on a simple human tension: whom do you trust when deception is the game’s explicit rule? Season 2 arrives with a proven first-season audience and a format that has worked across dozens of international versions, which means viewers already know the stakes. That familiarity is precisely what makes a sophomore season either freshly engaging or predictable.

In practice, The Traitors works best when the cast composition shifts the social dynamics entirely. A new batch of 21 celebrities means new fault lines, new alliances built from scratch, and new ways for the "Traitors" hidden among them to exploit personality rather than replay season one’s strategies. If the show recycles similar power plays or relies on familiar player archetypes, repeat viewers will spot the pattern immediately. The real test isn’t the format—it’s whether Karan Johar’s hosting and the new ensemble create enough fresh social friction to sustain eight weeks of weekly episodes.

One limitation worth naming: the format’s global success doesn’t guarantee its Indian iteration will crack the same engagement magic twice. Celebrity reality in India operates under different viewership habits and cultural dynamics than, say, the Netherlands or U.K. versions. Audience appetite for "Traitors" specifically may peak after one season, or it may depend heavily on which celebrities were cast and how actively fans engage on social media—metrics the announcement doesn’t disclose.

The most useful lens here may be less about whether season two "works" and more about what it reveals about how Indian audiences treat a format built on social betrayal. That’s a cultural question as much as a production one.

Read more People’s Choice stories on Studio CarryOnHarry. Reporting via Live News Vault.

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Editor's Choice

The Bronze Medal That Marked India’s Arrival in World Esports

Published

5 days ago

September 13, 2026

Johal

The Bronze Medal That Marked India’s Arrival in World Esports

Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk

Fifteen years ago, an Indian esports competitor using the handle HI_ISTLER achieved a podium finish at the World Cyber Games in Busan, South Korea — a national first at esports’ biggest global event of the era. His name is Prince Johal, and the medal remains, to date, India’s only WCG podium finish.

Prince At the 2011 World Cyber Games World Championship Finals, Johal earned bronze in Carrom 3D, a billiards simulator created by Neoact. According to the official results as recorded on Wikipedia, gold went to Bulgaria’s Iliyan Ivanov Kiryakov, silver to Brazil’s Diego Adelino da Paz, and bronze to Prince Johal, ahead of Portugal’s fourth-place finisher.

The path there was not smooth. Johal first won India’s national qualifying finals to earn a place at the World Championship, where he was drawn into a group stage against three opponents, including the eventual silver and gold medalists. According to Sportskeeda’s article highlighting underrecognized Indian gamer accomplishments, he suffered defeats in all three group-stage contests. That left him fighting for bronze in a rematch against the same opponent who’d beaten him in the group stage — a Portuguese player competing as TwinS_KluB. This time Johal won the decider 3-0, according to the same account, to secure the medal.

An independently compiled archive of the 2011 tournament frames the result as evidence of the game’s reach beyond its core markets in Asia, noting Johal’s finish specifically in that context.

World Cyber Games ran as one of the major international esports championships through the 2000s and into the early 2010s, drawing national teams and qualifying tournaments across dozens of countries before the org’s format and prominence shifted in later years. A bronze at the 2011 finals placed Johal on a very short list of Indian competitors who had reached a WCG podium at all.

Read more People’s Choice stories on Studio CarryOnHarry. Reporting via Live News Vault.

Press Releases at Studio CarryOnHarry

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