Amazon Prime Video launches movie rental service in India, unveils 40 new titles

Amazon Prime Video on Thursday unveiled its biggest slate of upcoming projects in India at its maiden showcase event - Prime Video Presents India - in Mumbai. Among the slew of projects, it also announced the launch of its transactional video-on-demand (TVOD) movie rental service in the country - Prime Video Store.

Through this service, customers can now get early access to the latest Indian and international movies, including a rich catalogue of popular movies (award winners and franchises) from around the world on a transactional (per-movie) basis.

"We are deeply committed to grow this segment further and are going bigger on our film licensing partnerships, expanding our co-production initiatives and are now excited to announce our foray into original movies. In addition to our investments in great content, we are super excited about the launch of our TVOD movie rental service, that will not just give even more expanded reach to these films but also give customers more choice in how they want to access and watch content," said Gaurav Gandhi, country head, Amazon Prime Video India.

The TVOD rental service will be available to all Prime members, as well as, anyone who isn't a Prime member.

Along with this, the OTT platform of US e-commerce giant also announced over 40 new titles, in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, across original series, original movies and co-productions that it plans to launch over the next 24 months.

The service recently completed half a decade of super-serving customers in India, and announced that it will more than doubling its investment in Prime Video India over the next 5 years.

Among the titles announced by Amazon Prime Video were new seasons of hit web series such as Made in Heaven, Pataal Lok, Mirzapur, The Family Man and Breathe: Into The Shadows. Amazon Prime Video also announced several new web series. This includes Bollywood superstar Shahid Kapoor's OTT debut Farzi.

The company also announced new multi-year licensing deals and co-productions with some of the country's biggest and most successful studios. Prime video will also foray into original movie production in India with films in Hindi and Telugu, to be released directly on the service.

The streaming service is aiming to become a home for talent, it said. It is working with a wide set of diverse creators with unique, cinematic voices from across the country. Almost 70 per cent of the new upcoming titles will feature new talent - both in front of and behind the camera. Furthermore, Prime Video is enhancing the scope of its unscripted series catalogue to explore genres like biographies, true-crime and investigative docudramas.

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