Sunny Arora, Director of Marinating Films needs no introduction now, having launched successful ventures like Telly calender and BCL with Anand Mishra, his company Marinating Films has taken the television industry by storm. Sunny and Anand felt the television industry leading faces weren't getting the due credit they deserved, so they came up with Telly calender where all the popular faces of television got to show their glamorous side. After shooting in Malaysia for 2014 edition, for 2015 the Telly calender will be shot in Jordan. We spoke to Sunny Arora about Telly calender, BCL and much more. Read on to know what he shared with us.
How did the idea of Telly Calender came to your mind?
In 2012 , we used to do lot of advertising shoots and we were looking for 2 female stars who were the best in television, so we searched top 10-12 faces of television however there were no links. So that's when we realized that there is a big gap, there is no platform that shows that these are the top faces of the TV industry despite of the fact that these girls have such an amazing fan following and they are all household names, that was the time we thought of coming up with something like Telly calender which will feature 10-12 faces of the Indian TV industry every year.
I am sure it's tough finalizing just 12-13 names for Telly Calender, so is there any criteria of being in Telly calender?
See the criteria is that you have to be a pretty face, and also a popular name. We generally take 2-3 faces from every channels so that we are able to give the fans their respective favourites. So we take 2-3 faces from Sony, Star and other major respective networks. However it's very difficult to replace the existing faces since these girls are doing so well and also they have been with us since we started. Initially when we started, we faced lots of problems. At that time even we were new to this industry so lots of girls didn't want to be a part of Telly calender but the girls who were with us since the beginning of Telly calender are a part of calender even today like Barkha Bisht Sengupta, Pooja Gor, Sukirti Kandpal, Sara Khan and Divyanka Tripathi.
Sunny and Anand at Telly calender pre launch party
This time Jordan has been chosen as the location of Telly Calender shooting, what made you finalize this location?
First of all this location is something which is unexplored, I have just seen one song of Hrithik and Kangana in the movie Krish which was shot there at the Dead Sea. Jordan in itself is a very beautiful location, it's very exotic. We are looking to shoot at places like the Dead Sea, Petra which is one of the new seven wonders of the world,Bethany-Beyond-The-Jordan, this is the place where Jesus was baptized and Wadi Rum so if you just search about Jordan you will see it's a beautiful place. We will do full justice to it and we will depict everything beautifully.
There are 5 new entrant this year, any specific reasons of getting them on board?
Yes lots of new shows came and these girls are really beautiful. Some of them were a part of BCL as well, so we decided lets get few 5 to 6 new girls. Honestly every year we don't just shoot with only 12 girls, we always add 1 or 2 more girls. This year also we have around 14 girls who are a part of the calender.
Vrushika Mehta is the youngest entrant this year and her fans are very much excited for it, anything you want to say about Vrushika?
Vrushika was a part of my team in BCL, that's how I know Vrushika and Shantanu both very well now, she has a very pretty face and I always wanted her to be a part of Telly calender. It was just yesterday, I messaged her that we wanted her to be a part of this and she said yes to it. Honestly I want to share that I didn't expect such a storm on social media sites by Vrushika Mehta fans, we are stunned by her popularity.
What's happening on the BCL front?
BCL is happening yes, the season 1 will start October 10th onwards. 2 new teams joins us so now we are 8 teams in total. This time BCL will be much much bigger and better that's all I can tell right now.
Marinating Films has always come up with superb ideas like Telly Calender, BCL so what's next?
Next will be an award show, it would be TV award show but it will have a novelty factor. In this we won't be awarding the TV actors on the basis of their acting, it won't be like best actor male, best actor female, it would be something very new, like how Telly calender and BCL had novelty factor in them. It will be very fresh and a new concept. So we would be coming up with an award show for Indian television actors but not about acting. This will be announced post BCL so yeah another thing to look forward to.
What's different in Telly Calender 2015? What can we expect this time?
Well Telly calender 2015 will be very much high on fashion and glamour and I have promised each and every Telly calender girls that we will give them the best images of their life through this calender. So in terms of photography, image quality, this calender is going to be the best. I have revamped my entire team for this year's telly calender, there was one team which was a part of Telly calender from the beginning but this time there is a new photographer, new stylist, new make up artist, so everything has been changed now because this year we have to do something very special, in terms of everything say glamour, fashion this year will rock. Even I feel that this year we have the most beautiful girls, if you compare all other editions with this lot, all of them are super beautiful.
Any message you want to convey to the fans of Telly Calender?
Just want to say keep supporting Telly calender and would also love to hear who is their favourite Telly calender girl, like last year fans really pushed us to take Asha Negi. Asha was supposed to do this year also but because of date issues she couldn't manage. So yeah just want to thank them for all the support till now and we hope they continue with their support.
The shooting of Telly calender will start from the 1st week of September and it's a 7 days schedule. The calender beauties this year are Krystle D'Souza, Nia Sharma, Surbhi Jyoti, Sukirti Kandpal, Pooja Gor, Rubina Dilaik, Divyanka Tripathi, Barkha Bisht Sengupta, Anita Hassanandani Reddy, Additi Gupte, Srishty Rode, Vrushika Mehta, Sara Khan and Tina Dutta. Apart from these beauties, Karan Tacker, Vishal Singh, Nandish Sandhu, Mrunal Jain, Rajesh Kumar and others will travel to Jordan to support the Telly calender.
TheTellyTimes wishes Marinating films all the very best for Telly calender 2015, as Sunny said this year Telly calender will rock, well even we can't agree more seeing the talented line up of beauties with the exotic location of Jordan. Well the television beauties are no doubt going to rock. What say? Don't forget to share how excited you are for Telly calender 2015 in comments below.
Priyanka Bhatt
CID
