High Fidelity: Audible Rides Audio Boom with Big Investments in Original Content
variety.comCynthia Littleton Business Editor Mother’s Day weekend 2019 marked a turning point in the young life of Madhuri Shekar. It all started two years before with a phone call from a woman named Kate Navin, then head of theater for Audible.
Navin said she’d recently been armed with money to develop original works from emerging play- wrights, and she was calling to offer Shekar, just a year out of Juilliard, the chance to write.
The only catch: Shekar’s play would have to be crafted as an audio-only production. Shekar’s answer to this challenge was “Evil Eye,” a 100-minute potboiler that revolves around daily telephone conversations between a mother in India and a daughter in Los Angeles.
The finished play was released on Audible in May 2019. For Shekar, the impact on her career was immediate. Within weeks, she was negotiating a deal with Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Blumhouse for the movie version that premiered on Amazon Prime Video in 2020.
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