Imagine Laloo Prasad Yadav singing a duet with Asha Bhosle, Abhishek Bachchan with Alisha Chinai or Sania Mirza with Sonu Nigam.
Now, what’s common between these three pairs is that while one half of each pair is a professional playback singer the other is not. In fact they are a politician, actor and sportsperson respectively. So what if these people came together in a show that had the non-professional singers testing their vocal skills and the pros helping them with it. The result could be exciting television.
Well, just such a show is coming up soon and in the process of putting the final touches to Stars on Stage are Star TV and Optimystix’, Sanjiv Sharma and Vipul D Shah’s production company.
The company had earlier produced shows like Khullja Sim Sim, the first edition of Indian Idol etc). The new show is scheduled to open later this year on Star Plus.
Says Sharma, “It’s a Scandinavian television format show called Stars on Stage which I had watched at Cannes recently. Five minutes into it, I was hooked to the one-hour long show. Seeing a celebrity sing with a professional singer in front of a jury can have its moments of fun.” Deepak Sehgal of Star TV confirms they’re doing the show. “It’s a great format and we should roll soon,” he says.
Sehgal isn’t forthcoming about either the hosts, the participants or the jury of the show: “We are talking to various people but nothing’s finalised.” The ‘celebrity’ is going to be key in this show and only if it has at least five to six A-list celebrity-singer pairs (the show will have about 12 to 14 pairs), will it get viewers hooked.
{{/usCountry}}Sehgal isn’t forthcoming about either the hosts, the participants or the jury of the show: “We are talking to various people but nothing’s finalised.” The ‘celebrity’ is going to be key in this show and only if it has at least five to six A-list celebrity-singer pairs (the show will have about 12 to 14 pairs), will it get viewers hooked.
{{/usCountry}}Says Sharma, “Yes, the celebrity is important but knowing Star, we are sure they won’t have any problem getting A-listers.”
The name of the show will be Indianised and it will be a biweekly.” Sharma says the reason the show could work big time on Indian television is “one, celebrities are a huge draw and two, when you see them overcoming stage fright and trying their best to get past to the next round, it’s going to be fun to see celebrities becoming singing stars by the end of the show.”
Now only, if Abhishek Bachchan gives the nod!