OMG producer Ashvini Yardi on future plans for Grazing Goats

Ashvini Yardi, who joined hands with Akshay Kumar to launch Grazing Goats Productions, says they aim to make movies that are high on content and that they are looking at regional films as well.

Their debut project was the critically acclaimed and commercially successful “OMG! Oh My God”.

“Under the (Grazing Goats) banner we will make only content-oriented films. I believe in films with strong scripts and I will put in all my hard work and passion into something that I believe in. If I don’t see that connect, I may not be able to give it my best,” Yardi, former programming head of the Colors channel, said.

“Scripts today are really working at the box office – like ‘Kahaani’ and ‘Vicky Donor’. So the audience is geared up. The superstar thing doesn’t work any more. Any good script, irrespective of the genre, will do for me. ‘OMG! Oh My God’ was our first attempt and I hope this will start a trend,” she said.

“Oh My God!” is based on Paresh Rawal’s Gujarati play “Kanji Virrudh Kanji” and features him as an atheist. Directed by Umesh Shukla, the film also had Akshay in a cameo. The film is one of the biggest ROI (return on investment) hits of the year, collecting Rs 75 crores at the box office.

Grazing Goats Productions will also make regional movies.

“Regional cinema is really growing. We have already made a Marathi film and it’s in the post-production stage. And we are looking at the Punjabi market as well because Akshay is essentially from Punjab. Since I am from the Maharashtrian background, I think I know that market well. We are also looking to try Bengali films as well,” she said.

Yardi has been a part of the television industry for the past 20 years. She quit her high profile job to turn a film producer.

“We started Grazing Goats in last December. Personally, I need challenges all the time. I have been in TV for 20 years now and the success that I saw in Colors, I thought the next step is to not to do TV anymore,” she said.

“I hadn’t really planned doing films. If you had asked me two years back, I would have laughed at the idea. But somehow as time went by, I realised that a person can go to a certain extent. So that challenge made me think of the other option and that was films. It wasn’t planned at all.”