Madhu Chopra explains that Purple Pebble Pictures was Priyanka Chopra’s Plan B if she failed in Hollywood.
News Mania Desk / Piyal Chatterjee / 3rd December 2024
Priyanka Chopra established her producing company Purple Pebble Pictures in 2015, months before her international debut with Quantico. On the Something Bigger Show podcast, Priyanka’s mother, Madhu Chopra, disclosed that they began it as the actor’s Plan B.
“When she decided to work in the Hollywood, when she got that opportunity, I told her, ‘You are here at the peak of your career and you want to go to US and start struggling from bottom up so we should have something to fall back here. So don’t just abandon everything and go. If you will have something here, you will feel confident and won’t be worried.’ That’s how we started Purple Pebble Productions. It was more like our plan B,” said Madhu.
“But when she did well there, Purple Pebble Pictures also flourished. She thinks very differently. Our production house only makes regional films. She had the platform and voice, so she did it. She has decided to give opportunity to newcomers and all our films has a newcomer, be it a writer, director or actor. She had it hard, so she wants to give a platform to others,” she added.
The firm debuted with Santosh Mishra’s 2016 Bhojpuri film Bam Bam Bol Raha Hai Kashi. It was followed by Rajesh Mapuskar’s 2016 dramedy Ventilaor, with Priyanka’s What’s Your Raashee? director Ashutosh Gowariker in the lead. The film won three National Awards: for direction, editing, and sound mixing.
Paakhi Tyrewala, an actor-casting director, made her directorial debut in 2018 with the Nepali film Pahuna: The Little Visitors, which Priyanka also produced. Her 2019 Marathi film Paani received the National Film Award for Best Film on Environmental Conservation/Preservation. She has also made films in Punjabi, Assamese, and English.
Priyanka appeared in two of her co-productions: Shonali Bose’s 2019 Bollywood feature The Sky Is Pink, and Ramin Bahrani’s 2020 Netflix India film The White Tiger. Her most recent work was Barry Avrich’s English feature Born Hungry, which debuted earlier this year.
