Portfolio and Productions Across India and International Markets
The film production portfolio brings together four distinct bodies of work: line production, producing, remake and adaptation work, and on-location execution. These roles should not be collapsed into one credit list because each carries different responsibilities. This page documents the projects by the work actually performed and links the individual credits to their supporting records.
That is the work Celluloid Pact does. And the portfolio we have built over the years is the clearest evidence of why we do it the way we do.
We are a production and consulting company operating across India, Southeast Asia, MENA, and Europe. The work spans line production, remake rights, co-productions, on-location consulting, and the kind of behind-the-scenes problem-solving that never makes the credits but always shapes the film. Manav Paul and K.R. Harish lead the company, and between them they hold documented production credits on Indian and Indonesian films spanning more than fifteen years.
This is not a company built on a single territory or a single type of film. It is built on the conviction that production expertise travels, that the skills, relationships, and problem-solving instincts developed on a Rajasthan desert shoot translate directly to a heritage location in Jordan, to a period epic in Jakarta, to a multi-city logistics puzzle in South India. What follows is a detailed account of how that conviction has been tested, refined, and proven across more than fifteen years of production work.
India: Where the Foundation Was Built
The Indian side of the portfolio covers ground from Mumbai to Rajasthan, from the comedy circuit to mainstream Bollywood and regional crossovers. India is where the working model was developed, where the working knowledge of crews, location departments, permit processes and studio infrastructure was built over years of projects that ranged from the experimental to the mainstream.
Quick Gun Murugun: Line Production and Production
Filmed across South India and Mumbai, Quick Gun Murugun is a satirical action comedy whose deliberately excessive production design required disciplined multi-location coordination. Produced under Kashyap Khan Films, it is a sustained parody of Tamil masala action conventions and remains a cult film today. It sits in the portfolio under line production and production.
Badhaai Ho
Badhaai Ho came nearly a decade later and represented something different entirely, a mid-budget family comedy that nobody expected to become one of the sleeper hits of 2018. The film starred Ayushmann Khurrana and Sanya Malhotra and dealt with a subject Indian mainstream cinema had rarely approached with any honesty: the uncomfortable comedy of an older couple’s unexpected pregnancy, and how their adult children process it. It worked because the script was disciplined and the production made a series of smart decisions about what not to spend money on. Our involvement in that production sits at the intersection of craft and commerce that we return to again and again, the understanding that budget discipline and creative ambition are not opposites, and that the best production decisions are usually invisible ones.
Drishyam, Drishyam 2, and Drishyam 3
The Drishyam franchise represents something else again, a property that began as a Malayalam original starring Mohanlal and became one of the most successfully extended film properties in Indian cinema. The Malayalam original is a masterclass in thriller construction: a story about a man who uses his obsessive knowledge of cinema to protect his family from a crime that spirals beyond his control. The Hindi versions, anchored by Ajay Devgn, rebuilt that story for a new audience and then extended it across sequels that deepened the original premise rather than simply repeating it. Working across the franchise gave us a direct view of how a single strong story idea can be produced, adapted, and extended across languages, territories, and years without losing what made it compelling in the first place.
The franchise reached Indonesia on 20 August 2026 with Ayah, Aku Mau Cerita, produced by Falcon Pictures and directed by Danial Rifki. Manav Paul is credited for remake licensing relating to Drishyam and Drishyam 2.
How a single strong film property travels between territories, in language, cast and market, is the subject of our film remakes and adaptations piece.
Stree, Badhaai Ho, the Drishyam films and Single Slipper Size-7 sit in the portfolio under remake and adaptation work rather than a single line-production slate. Manav Paul is credited as producer: ISA on Drishyam, Drishyam 2 and Badhaai Ho. His remake-licensing credit relating to Drishyam and Drishyam 2 on the Indonesian adaptation is noted above.
Under production, the record includes House Arrest, Plan A Plan B, What the Fish, Rainbow Fields, Manjha, Desert Tears and Tequila Nights. K.R. Harish is credited as producer on What the Fish, House Arrest, Plan A Plan B, Rainbow Fields, Manjha and Tequila Nights, and as associate producer on Desert Tears and Titik Nol.
Indonesia: The Territory That Changed Our Thinking
If the Indian work built our foundation, Indonesia expanded our frame entirely. The move into Southeast Asia was not a strategic pivot so much as a natural extension of relationships and a recognition that the production infrastructure being built in Indonesia, particularly around the commercial film industry centred in Jakarta, had both the ambition and the appetite for the kind of cross-territory collaboration that Celluloid Pact was positioned to enable.
Keluarga Slamet, the Indonesian remake of Badhaai Ho, is one of the projects we are most directly proud of. Taking a film that worked in a specific Indian cultural context and rebuilding it for Indonesian audiences required more than translation. It required a forensic understanding of what was universal in the original, the family dynamics, the generational embarrassment, the comedy of parents who are still, against all expectations, in love, and what was culturally particular. The Indonesian family unit, its relationship to religion, to community, to the unspoken rules of intergenerational respect, is different from its Indian equivalent in ways that matter to how a story lands. It is classified in the portfolio under remake and adaptation work, the Indonesian adaptation of Badhaai Ho.
Cross Country Projects
Haji Backpacker was a different kind of project, an Indonesian production filmed across multiple international territories, with Manav Paul serving as Supervising Producer and Location Manager. The film follows a young Indonesian man travelling through several Muslim-majority countries, and its production required coordinating with fixers, location teams and permit authorities across multiple jurisdictions simultaneously. It delivered a working model for how an Indonesian production house could mount an ambitious international shoot without losing control of the logistics or the budget.
Buya Hamka Vol. 1 & 2, the biographical epic about the revered Indonesian scholar, author, and Islamic leader Haji Abdul Malik Karim Amrullah, was a production where the subject matter demanded a specific kind of institutional care. Hamka is not just a historical figure in Indonesia, he is a moral reference point, a man whose writing, politics, and personal courage shaped the country’s religious and cultural identity across the twentieth century. The production design, location choices, period accuracy, and casting all needed to hold up to an audience with a deep personal relationship to the man being depicted. Manav Paul is credited as head of production on the films.
Titik Nol is classified under Production. Manav Paul holds supervising-producer, co-producer and associate-producer credits on the project, while K.R. Harish is credited as associate producer.
On Location: A Different Kind of Production Work
Alongside the film productions, Celluloid Pact has built a parallel body of work in on-location consulting, a practice that sits somewhere between scouting, logistics, and creative production support, and that has taken us to visually distinctive locations with different logistical requirements.
The on-location work has taken us to Ajmer, where the layered geography of the city, Dargah Sharif, Taragarh Fort, the marble-dust lanes of Kishangarh, the open water of Foy Sagar Lake, creates a visual environment that rewards a production prepared to work within its constraints. To Jordan, where the desert landscapes around Wadi Rum and the ancient city of Petra have become increasingly significant for international productions seeking MENA geography. To Tbilisi, where the architectural layering of Soviet-era residential blocks, medieval Georgian churches, and Art Nouveau commercial facades has made the city one of the more genuinely surprising emerging production destinations in Europe. Mumbai and New Delhi are also classified in the on-location record, covering major-city unit work, permit coordination and dense-location logistics.
In India specifically, our production base spans Mumbai, Delhi, Rajasthan, Kerala and the full South India region, built across years of city-by-city work with local crews and documented filing experience with the relevant permit authorities. That base is what makes India capable of supporting efficient production when the local process is understood and planned correctly.
Each of these locations represents a different kind of brief and a different kind of solution. What they share is that the production work starts well before the camera arrives and finishes long after it leaves, in the debrief and the documented production records that make the next shoot in that territory better prepared.
What the Portfolio Demonstrates
The portfolio demonstrates four related but distinct capabilities. The line-production work records responsibility for budgets, schedules and physical delivery across multi-location and international shoots. The production credits record producer accountability for bringing projects through to completion. The remake work documents licensing and adaptation across languages and markets, while the on-location record shows preparation and execution in specific cities, heritage environments and desert territories.
For an incoming producer, the value lies less in the familiarity of a title than in the responsibility demonstrated by it. A cross-border adaptation brief can be assessed against the Drishyam, Badhaai Ho and Keluarga Slamet record. A physically demanding international schedule can be read against Haji Backpacker and Buya Hamka. A location-led brief can be compared with the documented work in Ajmer, Jordan, Mumbai, New Delhi and Tbilisi.
Presenting the projects by role makes that evidence usable. It allows a producer to distinguish between a title on which the team held production responsibility, one involving line production, one involving adaptation rights and one documenting field execution.
How to Read the Portfolio Categories
The portfolio is organised by the responsibility actually held on each project, not by a single blanket credit. The four categories below carry different obligations, and a producer assessing Celluloid Pact for a new brief is really asking which of these responsibilities the team has carried before and how that translates to the job in front of them.
| Category | Examples | Responsibility demonstrated |
|---|---|---|
| Line Production | Quick Gun Murugun, Haji Backpacker, Buya Hamka | Budget, schedule and physical execution |
| Production | Titik Nol, House Arrest, Plan A Plan B, What the Fish | Producer responsibility and delivery |
| Remakes | Drishyam, Badhaai Ho, Keluarga Slamet, Single Slipper Size-7 | Licensing, adaptation and cross-market work |
| On Location | Ajmer, Jordan, Mumbai, New Delhi, Tbilisi | Location preparation and field execution |
Line production is the evidence a producer looks for when the question is delivery: can this team hold a budget and a schedule and get a physically demanding shoot to the screen intact? The line-production titles were run on real constraints, a deliberately chaotic multi-location comedy, an internationally travelling Indonesian feature, a two-part historical epic held to a standard set by an audience with a personal stake in the subject. What they demonstrate is not a genre but a capacity: the operational discipline that turns a plan into a finished film. That capacity is the subject of the line production services workflow, from breakdown and budgeting through filming and wrap.
The production credits demonstrate a different responsibility from line production: producer accountability for delivery rather than only physical execution. Across the production slate the obligation is to bring a film through from commitment to completion, carrying the creative and commercial accountability that a line producer executes against. For an incoming producer, this is the evidence that the team understands a production from the financier’s side as well as the floor’s, which matters when the brief needs a partner who can hold both at once. On these titles that has meant carrying a project from the point of commitment through casting, scheduling and delivery, and answering for the outcome rather than only for a single department, which is the distinction between producing a film and servicing one.
The remake and adaptation work is a different discipline again: acquiring or licensing a property, then rebuilding it so it lands in a new language and market without losing what made it work. The Indonesian adaptation of Badhaai Ho and the Indonesian Drishyam are the clearest evidence here, cross-market projects where the responsibility was the rights, the cultural translation and the production bridge between territories rather than a single-country shoot. A producer weighing a cross-border property is looking for exactly this record, since adaptation risk sits as much in the licensing and the cultural translation as in the shoot itself, and the mechanics of how a property travels between territories are set out on the film remakes and adaptations page.
On-location work is the field-execution evidence: preparing and running a shoot in a specific place, against its permit process, its access constraints and its logistics, whether that is a heritage city under conservation orders, a desert with specific community-coordination requirements, or a dense metropolitan unit. Read together, the four categories answer the practical question behind any new brief, which of these responsibilities does the shoot need, and has the team carried it before. Producers still deciding how to staff a shoot can use the film production services guide to choose between a fixer, line producer and full-service company.
The reason to read the portfolio this way is that experience does not transfer as a genre or a title, it transfers as a demonstrated capacity to carry a specific responsibility under pressure. A producer bringing a cross-border adaptation is served by the remake record; one bringing a physically demanding shoot into an unfamiliar territory is served by the line-production and on-location record; one who needs a partner to carry delivery accountability is served by the production credits. The value of separating the categories is that it lets an incoming brief be matched to real, checkable evidence rather than to a general claim of having made films, which is exactly the assessment a careful producer makes before committing a schedule and a budget to a new partner.
Working on a Production in India?
For India-based briefs, our line producer in India page covers the regional crew, location and permit structure.
The role-filtered portfolio carries the underlying title and location records.
