From IIT Stage to Panchayat Director: Deepak Mishra's Journey to Rs 69 Crore Film

Deepak Kumar Mishra began his creative career as an IIT Bombay student writing, directing, and acting in theatre plays before going on to direct the popular streaming series Panchayat and a fantasy feature film.

Early Career and TVF

His early work included playing a character inspired by Raghu Ram in TVF's first viral video, Rowdies, a spoof of MTV's Roadies. Arunabh Kumar, the founder of TVF, had seen Mishra perform on stage at IIT Bombay and contacted him when he needed an actor for his first video. Mishra had no prior camera experience and treated the shoot as his informal film school, learning every department of filmmaking before moving from acting into direction. The viral success of the Rowdies spoof brought him sudden recognition, which he later recalled as a shock at the time.

Moving to Long-Form and Panchayat

As TVF grew, Mishra and his team realized that ten-minute internet videos were too short to tell full stories, leading to early web shows like Permanent Roommates in 2014 and Pitchers. Mishra later directed the second season of Permanent Roommates and worked on Humorously Yours. The inspiration for Panchayat came partly from Mishra's own childhood memories of visiting his grandparents' villages from Varanasi, combined with writer Chandan Kumar's background in Bihar. The creators wanted to depict a realistic, slow-paced village life without major plot twists. The project was originally planned as a five-episode YouTube series with a budget of about Rs 10 lakh, as no OTT platform was ready to take it initially. Prime Video eventually backed the project, and the first season premiered in 2020.

Recent Film Work

Mishra has now transitioned to feature-length cinema, directing the fantasy folklore film Vvaan: Force of the Forrest. Starring Sidharth Malhotra and Tamannaah Bhatia, the film has completed its first week in theatres and earned around Rs 69.07 crore worldwide. Influenced by filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, Mishra aims to tell stories across multiple genres rather than staying limited to one style.

Context

The Evolution of Indian digital entertainment has seen web creators shift successfully from low-budget YouTube sketches to high-end streaming series and major theatrical releases. Shows like Panchayat helped redefine rural-themed content in India by focusing on ordinary, slice-of-life situations rather than traditional melodrama.