Producing late night talk show Movers and Shakers and also being the creative director for it changed his life, says director-producer Abhigyan Jha who has made a name for himself in the entertainment industry. Abhigyan, who has written the stories of many films such as Krishna Cottage and Phir Zindagi, as well TV shows Tum Bin Jaaoon Kahaan and also his debut film Sacred Evil – A True Story, says that his journey has been nothing short of a miracle.
“The biggest landmark in my career is Movers and Shakers, that show changed everything. Before that none of the non-fiction shows was ever that big. The show was such a hit it brought so much business 25-26 years back. It was the first show that went five days a week, I had a team of 40 people under me. Movers and Shakers started as a weekly episode and gradually twice, thrice a week, and by the time we reached the 78th episode, it was 5 times a week. We had Sushma Swaraj once on the show where she said that PM Atalji used to watch the show, and liked the bits where we used to make fun of him. No one ever got such an endorsement for any show ever. That was a game changer for me and it made a big difference in my career. Once you have been endorsed by someone if Atalji’s stature..I couldn’t go back to doing mundane mediocre stuff.
We had been given a 10 pm slot for Movers and Shakers which was the first show that ever aired on a 10 pm slot because no shows were aired at 10:10 pm. It was the first-ever late-night show,” he says.
He adds that the show taught him a lot as well. “I learnt that whatever I have to do, I should do it with conviction. Another landmark in my career was when I left TV for a long time and started working in films. This was at the end of 2002, the era of channel interference had started. I was doing Krishna Arjun and Avinash IPS. I left both the shows and I said I would now do films. I signed my first film as a director in two years. One of the films I wrote was Krishna Cottage under Ekta Kapoor’s banner and after that, I made my film which starred actors from the UK and France and was shot by a French cinematographer in English and Hindi named Sacred Evil – A True Story. It was made by Sahara One Motion Pictures and won the Golden Palm at the Mexico International Film Festival in 2010,” he says. On being asked about directing Janani- AI- Ki Kahani he says, “It is a unique show so the experience is unique too. The response has been fabulous so far”.
