MAM
Marvel’s Wastelanders: Black Widow – Hindi Audible podcast out now
Mumbai: Audible, a leading creator and provider of premium storytelling today released the Hindi Audible Original podcast series Marvel’s Wastelanders: Black Widow.
Almost thirty years after the villains’ victory, Helen Black arrives at her new apartment in “The Onar”: a complex that S.H.I.E.L.D owns and operates, which has become the epitome of dystopian wealth and inequality. What Helen doesn’t know is that on the day she arrived, Lisa Cartwright also moved into the Onar. Hired by a private security company, she quickly realises that Helen Black is not who she says she is…
Marvel’s Wastelanders: Black Widow features an exceptional cast, with Kareena Kapoor Khan as the voice of Black Widow/Helen Black, Masaba Gupta as Lisa Cartwright, Vihaan Samat as Jordan Temple, Adah Sharma as Yelena Belova, Nitu Chandra as Judy Kratz and Aditi Bhatia as K.I.M.
Marvel’s Wastelanders: Black Widow (Hindi Edition)
Sharing her excitement on the launch of the series, Kareena Kapoor Khan said, “Breathing life into a character as iconic as Black Widow has been a surreal experience. Taking listeners on an action-packed journey in Marvel’s Black Widow on Audible, using only my voice, has been a unique challenge. I hope that listeners are able to envision the story using their imagination and resonate with her unyielding spirit like I did.”
Marvel’s Wastelanders is the first collaboration between Audible and Marvel Entertainment and will be released simultaneously in French, German, Hindi, Italian and Japanese in the respective countries as a global audio experience with top-quality production, featuring renowned and high-profile actors in the roles of Marvel’s legendary Super Heroes.
More information on the cast and premiere dates for subsequent seasons of the Marvel’s Wastelanders series, including Wolverine, Doom, and Marvel’s Wastelanders, will be announced at a later date. The six-season audio epic originally launched as an English language series in June 2021.
The English language version of Marvel’s Wastelanders: Black Widow was written by Alex Delyle (Fear the Walking Dead), directed by Timothy Busfield (Thirtysomething, The West Wing), with sound design and original music by Daniel Brunelle (The Two Princes, Sandra).
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Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
