Karthik Anantha Subramanian takes charge of fiction at Sun NXT

CHENNAI: Out with the old, in with the new, and no time wasted in between. Karthik Anantha Subramanian has wrapped up a five-year stint at JioStar and, within weeks, is already running the show at Sun NXT as head of fiction (south). Three weeks into the job, he says the energy has been amazing.

His brief is wide. Karthik, who started in September 2026 and works from Chennai, will develop and produce movies and series across Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam, three of India’s most closely watched streaming markets. It is a big canvas, and he arrives with more than 12 years in media production and content development as a writer, producer and director.

The track record helps. At JioHotstar, where he served as executive producer from August 2021, Karthik released more than ten shows, among them Heartbeat, Label, Parachute, LBW, Good Wife and Nadu Center. That is a decent run for any producer, and a useful calling card for a platform that wants to build its fiction slate. He describes the JioStar chapter as a memorable one, spanning five years, and says he is grateful to everyone he worked with and for the experiences that challenged and shaped him.

Karthik is also a pen-wielding creative, not merely a manager of them. He wrote the story and screenplay of “Chilli Chicken”, a 120-minute feature film now streaming on Amazon Prime. That combination of writing, producing and directing matters in a job where the hardest part is often knowing which scripts deserve a green light. A head of fiction who has sat in the writers’ chair tends to speak the same language as the people pitching.

The earlier part of his career points to a taste for building things. At Crea Shakthi, where he spent six years from July 2015, he rose from training executive to creative head, a post he held from July 2019 to July 2021. As creative head, he headed operations, oversaw the release of Crea-Play, an OTT and edtech app (creaplay.app, creashakthi.com), conceptualised new creative initiatives spanning films, shows, digital content and e-books, and led an organisation of more than 20 people. Before that, he spent a year as a project engineer at Wipro Technologies, from July 2014 to July 2015. Engineer, trainer, app builder, writer, producer: an unusual path, but one that blends creative instinct with operational discipline.

For Sun NXT, the appointment signals intent to deepen its original fiction across the south. For Karthik, it is a fresh chapter. “Here’s to new stories, new challenges, and a new chapter,” he says. If the early energy is any guide, the next few seasons of southern streaming could be worth watching.