SonyLIV’s ‘Freedom at Midnight’ sets the tone for Season 2
Sony’s streaming platform SonyLIV has found success with “Freedom at Midnight,” its adaptation of Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre’s 1975 nonfiction book about Indian independence, with plans for a second season already in motion.
The seven-episode first season ends on a cliffhanger, with showrunner Nikkhil Advani confirming that season 2 will tackle the refugee crisis that followed the partition of India. “Twenty to thirty million people will be driven from their homes,” says Advani Variety. ‘What Gandhi predicted would happen. Everyone believed that partition would be the answer to quell and stop the violence. Mahatma Gandhi said it will only get worse.”
Advani was in Goa to participate in the recently concluded Film Bazaar market, which was part of the ongoing International Film Festival of India (IFFI). He was participating in a panel discussion organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry hosted on a yacht of the Indian Motion Picture Producers’ Association.
The second season is expected to launch in 2025, said Danish Khan, executive VP and business head of SonyLIV and StudioNext. For Sony, adapting ‘Freedom at Midnight’ fit into their strategy of telling Indian stories. “We will tell stories about India in a very authentic, cerebral way,” says Khan. “There is a group of people who are our subscribers and who appreciate highly researched, authentic work.”
One of the main challenges in adapting the book was condensing decades of context into the time frame of the series. “The events between August 16, 1946, then [Muhammad Ali] Jinnah chose to give the Direct Action Day speech, and January 30, 1940 – these events are beyond dispute,” says Advani. “It’s almost a roller coaster.”
Saugata Mukherjee, content head, SonyLIV, adds, “The biggest challenge was how to adapt a 1,000-page book (which is also a non-fiction book) without losing its essence. And manage to make it fun for a large audience, history lovers or not.”
The series has been dubbed into Hindi, Malayalam and Telugu to reach a wider audience in India. “The idea is that this story has to travel,” says Khan.
