For Mishra, the journey has been about learning how to tell stories in different formats — and knowing when to move on.

It started with theatre at IIT Bombay

Mishra was active in theatre while studying at IIT Bombay. He wrote, directed and acted in plays. That eventually brought him in contact with TVF founder Arunabh Kumar, who was then working on a research project at the institute.

Story continues below.
Subscribe to see fewer ads.

Around 2011-12, Arunabh called Mishra and told him he was starting something and needed an actor for his first video. He had seen Mishra perform on stage and remembered him as someone who could shout convincingly.

Mishra went to Arunabh’s office and what followed was TVF Rowdies, a spoof of MTV’s Roadies, in which he played a character inspired by Raghu Ram.

But Mishra had no experience of working on camera. As he told The Lallantop, he told Arunabh that he had been doing theatre but did not know how a camera shoot worked. That became his informal film school.

“I slowly started working with Arunabh and learnt everything. I worked in every department of filmmaking because I knew that before doing something, it was important to learn it,” he said.

Story continues below this ad

He stayed on with TVF and gradually moved from acting towards direction.

Rowdies is a spoof of popular show Roadies.

The Rowdies spoof became a viral success and gave Mishra his first taste of what it meant to suddenly be recognised.

In a 2022 interview with Screen, he recalled the experience. “There were messages everywhere, people would recognise you. That time it came as a shocker but now with time, we have gotten used to it,” he said.

Story continues below this ad

From 10 minutes spoof videos to web series

TVF’s early videos were largely spoofs and short sketches. But Mishra and the team soon realised that they wanted more room to tell stories.

“We used to make spoof videos and we realised that 10 minutes was not enough for us to tell a story. We all wanted to know why we shouldn’t do something in a longer format,” he said.

That experiment became Permanent Roommates. The 2014 series was among the early Indian shows created specifically for the web and became an important step in TVF’s transition from viral videos to long-form storytelling.

Mishra, who directed the show’s second season, said, “We made five episodes initially and made them in such a way that more seasons could follow.”

Story continues below this ad

A still from Permanent Roommates.

It was followed by projects such as Pitchers, while Mishra also worked on Humorously Yours and other TVF shows.


The success of these shows helped establish TVF as a major player in India’s emerging digital entertainment space.

How his childhood became Panchayat

The idea for Panchayat came partly from Mishra’s own memories of growing up in Varanasi.

“I am from Banaras. My parents used to take us to our maternal and paternal grandparents’ villages during the summer vacations. Compared to Banaras, these villages were much slower,” he said.

Writer Chandan Kumar, who also came from a village background in Bihar, had experienced a similar environment. Their conversations about those memories eventually led to the idea for Panchayat.

Story continues below this ad

“We thought we should make something around this. We wanted to show a village that was like the villages we had seen — realistic, natural and slow, where nothing major happens and there are no big plot twists,” Mishra said.

That became the basic philosophy of Panchayat. Instead of creating a village full of dramatic twists, the show found stories in ordinary life — local politics, relationships, petty disputes, government work and the slow rhythm of a place where not much seems to happen.

Interestingly, the show was not initially conceived as a large OTT production.

“We initially thought we would make a five-episode show, shoot it in Film City and upload it on YouTube. The budget was around Rs 10 lakh. No OTT platform was ready to take it, so we thought we would execute it on a small budget,” Mishra said.

Story continues below this ad

A still from Panchayat.

Then Prime Video agreed to back it. “Thankfully, Prime Video was ready to back us, and then Panchayat was made,” he said.


The first season arrived in 2020 and turned the quiet village drama into a major streaming success.

After Panchayat, Deepak Mishra felt the next step had to be even longer.

“After that journey, I felt that the journey of long-form was complete and now we should go to the longest form and move towards cinema,” he said.

From Phulera to folklore

With Vvaan, Mishra has taken a very different creative route. The film moves away from the everyday realism of Panchayat and into fantasy, folklore and the supernatural. Mishra does not want to be limited by one kind of story.

Story continues below this ad

“I am a very big fan of Steven Spielberg. He has made films in every genre in his life. I am also a greedy person in that sense; I want to tell every kind of story,” he said.

While Vvaan is a very different proposition from Panchayat, Mishra says the approach remains the same – to be honest about the world he is creating.

“We have worked very hard. Honesty towards ourselves, whatever new we were creating, the honesty is still intact,” he said.

The film has now completed its first week in theatres, recording Rs 53.50 crore in India net collections and Rs 69.07 crore worldwide, according to Sacnilk.

Story continues below this ad

Vvaan: Force of the Forrest stars Sidharth Malhotra and Tamannaah Bhatia.

Mishra’s ambition is also larger than simply making successful films. He wants to make an Indian film that reaches the Oscars and wins the Best International Feature Film category.

But he says the ambition is about storytelling rather than scale. “My ambition is more about stories and storytelling than budget, team or setup,” he said.

The Amitabh Bachchan dream

Mishra grew up in Uttar Pradesh, and for him, working with Amitabh Bachchan was a childhood dream.

“I am from UP, so every child in UP wants to work with Amitabh Bachchan ji. For people like us, it remains a childhood dream to get an opportunity to work with him,” he said.

That dream has already been partly fulfilled. Mishra got an opportunity to direct Bachchan in a government advertisement.

“My wish was to work with him once on a set. That dream has been fulfilled on a small level. I want to work with him in a full-length feature film as well,” he said.

The ideas that were once rejected

Mishra’s journey has also included plenty of rejection. Not every idea he and his team pitched found a platform or a producer.

“There have been many such cases. Initially, we pitched so many ideas to people and platforms who did not make our stories,” he said.

But he looks at those rejections differently now.

“And there is nothing big about that. Today, all those people want to work with us,” he said.