Bollywood loves the meme culture. And, that is also how Tiger Baby, launched by filmmakers Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti, decided to announce the arrival of this one-year-old production house on Instagram. Stars like Alia Bhatt, Ranveer Singh, Anil Kapoor, Kalki Koechlin and more reposted these memes that turned some of their most memorable characters into baby tigers.
Actors Ranveer Singh and Kalki Koechlin reposted these memes
“We wanted to collaborate with actors who’ve supported me even before I made a film. We wanted to give a shout out to them instead of going the other way round. This is the reason why we came up with the personalised memes,” says Akhtar. The company behind these iconic illustrations is a creative studio called By the Gram.
Karan Johar and Gauri Khan also joined the Tiger Baby Instagram party
“I’ve worked with this very talented company for many of my previous projects. Plus, it has been a year since we launched the company and we realised that we did not have much (of a) presence on social media,” she adds. Akhtar’s production house has previously given us India’s official entry to the Oscars this year—Gully Boy—along with the widely popular TV series Made in Heaven.
Alia Bhatt and Konkona Sen Sharma also got the Tiger Baby avatar
The women-led production house is now set for many other exciting projects. “We’re going to release Ghost Stories (a follow up to Bombay Talkies and Lust Stories). It’s an Indian anthology horror film, which is going to drop in 2020. We’re also planning to come up with season two of Made in Heaven. Other than this, we also have many other projects lined up with Amazon and Netflix,” she exclaims.
Abhay Deol and Anil Kapoor posted these memes to support Tiger Baby
Much to the industry’s admiration, Tiger Baby marks a new era for the Hindi film industry, breaking away from cookie-cutter films we often see in Bollywood. The fact that it’s run by two extremely talented women makes it even more promising. When I ask Akhtar why she chose a Tiger, now an Instagram-approved mascot, for her production house, she answers with, “Tiger is my favourite animal. It’s a symbol of strength; it’s Indian and it’s feline.”
