Popular crime writer Hussain Zaidi has teamed up with GoQuest Productions to launch Golden Pen Productions, aimed at taking Indian crime stories and writers to the global audience. The venture will solely focus on the crime thriller genre, and produce platform-agnostic content across TV, Web, Films and podcasts.
Zaidi, known for his gritty and no-holds-barred representation of the criminal underbelly in books such as “Black Friday”, “Dongri to Dubai: Six decades of the Mumbai Mafia” and “Headley and I”, will also mentor talent.
“My years of experience engaging with the criminal world has left me with a wealth of untold stories, even after so many of them find their ultimate expression in books or silver screen scripts.
“And I believe it to be the case with many writers emerging from the hinterlands, who have seen and experienced so much during their normal growing up years that they have developed a bank of absolutely dark yet vehemently true stories which deserve to be tapped into,” Zaidi said in a statement.
As a ‘writers first’ label in India, Golden Pen wants to develop content that pushes the boundaries on every page or in every frame while being deeply rooted in reality. “The emergence of new media has resulted in audiences looking for edgy and thrilling content, and the success of series such as ‘Narcos’ or ‘Sacred Games’ has shown the potential of such content,” said Vivek Lath, Managing Director, GoQuest Media Ventures.
Their projects will be developed with their roots in India but with a strong eye for distribution in international markets as well. According to Jaspinder Kang, Partner, GoQuest Productions, the company is currently looking at developing content for the Indian market (TV and web), but it will eventually be looking at supplying versions of its original content to overseas producers and channels too.