From Pandemic Curiosity to OTT Success: How Rajkumar Hirani Created Pritam & Pedro
Rajkumar Hirani’s journey from celebrated filmmaker to OTT producer was not an easy one. Pritam & Pedro starring Vikrant Massey, Arshad Warsi and Vir Hirani did not start out as a streaming project at all. In fact Hirani has said that he never wanted to make a series or even think of telling a story revolving around cybercrime. The idea came about during the COVID-19 pandemic when his curiosity about online fraud cases led him on a deep dive into digital crime ecosystem.
Directed by Avinash Arun and produced by Hirani, the series mixes cybercrime with comedy, emotion and human drama. It doesn’t treat digital fraud as a serious or technical subject only; Pritam & Pedro tries to explore people and circumstances around such crimes too. Vikrant Massey, Arshad Warsi and Vir Hirani are some of its leading actors and it uses thriller elements along with humour and emotional storytelling.
But for Hirani the journey was much longer than just getting cameras rolling. During the pandemic when normal filmmaking activities stopped, the filmmaker started reading about different cases of online scams and fraud. What seemed like “just” casual reading soon turned into a deeper fascination with how cybercriminals operate and how authorities track them down.
As his interest grew Hirani decided newspaper reports and online accounts were not enough to understand the subject. He began talking to cybercrime officials and ethical hackers in Mumbai and Delhi. Conversations with them showed him how rapidly digital crime is evolving, what different techniques fraudsters use and difficulties of investigating such cases.
Hirani says that all the material he had to deal with eventually made him realise that “the story can’t be told in two hours”. A two hour movie would have compressed a world of characters and situations and layers of conflict, so he pushed himself towards the long form format of a series.
“I wasn’t planning to make a series; let alone one about cybercrime. But during the pandemic I read a lot of incidents and was fascinated by that world,” Hirani said when asked about the origins of the project. “So after talking to cybercrime officials and hackers in Mumbai and Delhi I felt it couldn’t be contained in a film’s duration.” That realisation, he said, led him to Pritam & Pedro.
The decision was also a new chapter for Hirani’s career. He’s generally known for social themes mixed with humour and emotional storytelling in films but with the series he went long-form streaming content territory, OTT gave them more room to develop the cybercrime backdrop while spending time on characters and their individual journeys.
One of the show’s greatest strengths has been that it mixes genres. Cybercrime is the backdrop but not everything is technical or conventional thriller — there are comedy and emotional moments in the story too which give it tone (some aspects of Hirani’s storytelling style).
Vikrant Massey and Arshad Warsi were cast as well. Each actor brings something different to the screen; Vir Hirani’s addition gave them another dimension too. Their performances made the series more relatable than just a cybercrime story.
Pritam & Pedro got positive response from audiences and critics after its OTT release. The show’s topical subject (at a time when digital scams are so prevalent) attracted eyeballs. Also, the fact that it had a contemporary premise and was easy to understand made viewers gravitate towards it.
The success of the series must have inspired Hirani to keep digging into the story, he’s working on season two now (the world created from his pandemic-era curiosity has grown far beyond its original conception).
What’s interesting about Pritam & Pedro is that it wasn’t born from a pre-defined plan to enter OTT space but rather from uncertainty, Hirani had time to explore a subject he was intrigued by because of the uncertainty. He researched cybercrime and eventually realised that story needed more space than a feature film could offer.
Reading about online scams while in lockdown, talking to cybercrime experts and ethical hackers; then turning that research into a streaming series. Hirani’s example shows how an accidental curiosity can turn into a major creative project. With the second season already in development, the filmmaker’s accidental journey into OTT seems far from over.
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