Book-to-screen adaptations on streaming services have gained popularity in recent years and are frequently well-liked by the audience. In reality, book adaptations received 85 nominations for Emmy awards the previous year. The Handmaid’s Tale, The Queen’s Gambit, Bridgerton, The Flight Attendant, and The Underground Railroad were leading the charge. Closer to home, successful book-to-OTT adaptations include Sacred Games, Grahan, Scam 1992, and A Suitable Boy.

This year, for the first time, the NFDC’s Film Bazaar at IFFI is also launching a comparable part – Book to Box Office – taking inspiration from the Shoot The Book section at Marche Du Films at Cannes. Publishers are asked to pitch their works for screen adaptation at the festival via The Film Bazaar. Book to Box Office was created to fill the gap between writers and publishers who have material that can be turned into a script and filmmakers from across the world who are searching for quality content.

According to NFDC representatives, the goal is to connect the literary community with all of the Indian and foreign filmmakers, sales agents, distributors, OTT platforms, producers, and funders. According to Ravinder Bhakar, MD, NFDC, “Film Bazaar has introduced a new segment on book adaptations this year for the first time. We have given publishers, filmmakers, OTT platforms, sales agents, and production companies the chance to collaborate in order to adapt stories for the big screen. With the addition of this new feature, Film Bazaar’s effort to tell fresh stories on film gains momentum. We anticipate that the talks and pitching sessions will result in screenplays being created from books.

The vertical is being launched for the first time, but according to officials, they already have a broad group of authors, literary agencies, and publishing houses. 27 people from 21 publishing houses and 2 literary agencies will be in attendance. It has also been revealed that other authors would be in attendance to promote their novels.