Jio Studios and Mahaveer Jain on September 28 announced a new initiative, ‘Newcomers’, at FICCI FRAMES which was held at Hotel Westin, Powai, Bombay. Twenty-three film directors and producers have come on board under the auspices of Newcomers, to mentor and launch new talent including actors, writers, directors, etc. They include Rajkumar Hirani, Rohit Shetty, Kabir Khan, Ashutosh Gowariker, Sukumar, Vishnu Vardhan, R. Balki, Gauri Shinde, A.R. Murugadoss, Ali Abbas Zafar, Siddharth Anand, Jagan Shakti and others.
A panel discussion with some of the top names associated with the initiative was held at FICCI FRAMES the same evening. The panelists included Amit Sharma, Abhishek Sharma, Anees Bazmee, Imtiaz Ali, Mrighdeep Singh Lamba, Nitesh Tiwari, Raj and DK, Ram Madhvani and Mahaveer Jain. The discussion was moderated by Komal Nahta. The panel was unanimous in its feeling that the film industry needed more talent to flow in. The panelists said, it was payback time as the industry had given them a lot and it was now their turn to give back to the industry new talent after identifying and mentoring it. Mahaveer Jain remarked that although people believed that it was his initiative, it was actually the collective initiative of all the tops of the industry because he had realised, during his interactions with the industry people over the years, that everyone felt the need to bring in more talent. “All I have done is to formalise the thoughts of the industry people and structure the same into ‘Newcomers’.”