FICCI FRAMES Day 2: Cricketainment, AI & Theatre Take Centre Stage

Mumbai: The second day of FICCI Frames 2025 focused on a range of topics within the media and entertainment industry, including the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the creative economy, and the power of Indian stories on a global scale.

While industry leaders from Meta, Google, and JioStar discussed AI’s role in personalising content and creating interactive narratives, the entertainment highlight of the day was the Ekta Kapoor-Smriti Irani conversation celebrating 25 years of the TV show Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and Anil Kapoor’s fireside chat.

The ‘Cricketainment’ phenomenon wasn’t far behind, with a session exploring the influence of live sports on entertainment, featuring former cricketer Dinesh Karthik and Ishan Chatterjee, CEO, Sports at JioStar. Chatterjee highlighted the immense growth potential of the sports economy, citing a Deloitte study projecting expansion from $30 billion to $70 billion by 2030. “The next five to ten years are going to be crazy for the sports economy,” he said.

Karthik revealed how early resistance to data-driven info has eventually resulted in sharper precision with the help of tech. “The beauty of technology is the questions you ask of it,” he summed up aptly. A special session shone the spotlight on Madhya Pradesh as India’s emerging creative and cinematic hub. It explored why there is ease of doing business in the state, whether it is in web series, movies or documentaries, and also now with short films and regional films.

FICCI Frames 2025 Launches Media Revolution

They are also giving preference to teams with a women crew. Notably, web series Maharani’s main lead, Huma Qureshi was part of the discussion too. Not to be left behind was a session on the Punjabi film industry, which had comedian and actor Rajiv Thakur and actor Manav Vij.

Other notable sessions were discussions on AVGC-XR innovation, immersive technologies, and the global creative pipeline, exploring the nature of true crime shows, the Saiyaara phenomenon and refreshingly, one titled ‘The Power of Theatre in Cinema’s DNA’, which had veterans such as Chittaranjan Tripathy (Director, NSD) and actors Raghubir Yadav, Rajpal Yadav, Mita Vashisht and Swanand Kirkire, dissecting theatre as the foundation of Indian cinematic artistry.