ZEE X FIFA

A man with Maradona's hair and Maradona's scowl glares at a television in a Mumbai living room. A family in Brazil yellow crowds a sofa with a bowl of popcorn. A boy in an Argentina shirt screams at a goal. Someone watches on the screen in the back of a car. Nobody is in a stadium. Poora India watchega. All of India will watch.

ZEE x FIFA is the 68-second launch film for ZEE5's coverage of the FIFA World Cup 2026, made in under a week after Zee Entertainment picked up the Indian rights ten days before kick-off. Written by Talented and directed by Atul Kattukaran for First December Films, it turns the tournament into a national watch party, one living room at a time. On the ZEE5 channel it has 26 million views.

At a glance

• Brand: ZEE5 and Unite8 Sports, Zee Entertainment
• Agency: Talented, with mktgstack on social and digital
• Production house: First December Films
• Director: Atul Kattukaran
• Director of Photography: Vikas Vasudevan
• Launch: 11 June 2026, the day the tournament kicked off
• Running time: 68 seconds
• Line: Poora India Watchega
• Reach: 26 million views on the ZEE5 channel by September 2026, in a campaign of cutdowns that passed 30 million each

The brief

On 2 June 2026 Zee Entertainment announced it had bought the Indian broadcast and streaming rights to the FIFA World Cup, ending months of uncertainty about whether the tournament would be shown in India at all. The opening match was on 11 June. Zee had nine days to launch four new sports channels under the Unite8 Sports name, tell the country where to watch, and make ZEE5, better known for Hindi serials and films, feel like the home of football.

Karishma Changroth, brand strategy lead at Talented, described the situation as the campaign: India had suddenly gained access to one of the world's biggest sporting events. She also described the working week: "It was a jam room, newsroom, edit room and war room all rolled into one."

The temptation, with that little time, is a functional film: dates, channels, a subscribe button. Talented refused it. Changroth again: "The biggest compromise we rejected was becoming purely functional." The film had to feel like it belonged to football fans, who, in her words, are protective because the World Cup matters to them.

The idea: the stadium is every Indian living room

Indian football fans do not have a home team in the World Cup. What they have is a team each, chosen years ago and defended for life, and a sofa to watch from. The film is a tour of those sofas.

• A cold open in the language of football itself: a still of a striker on white, a ball on grass, then a television in a lamp-lit room showing a team lifting the trophy.
• The Maradona lookalike, in Argentina blue and white with the hair and the moustache, alone with his television.
• A family in Brazil yellow, five of them on one sofa, popcorn on the table.
• A city skyline at night, every window a screen.
• A young man asleep on a couch with a football on his chest, and a friend jumping over him.
• A grey-haired couple in Netherlands orange, and their son between them with his hands clasped in prayer.
• A couple gripping each other on a floral sofa. A house party under string lights, a dozen faces lit by one screen.
• The match on the screen in the back of a car.
• A boy in an Argentina shirt, then a kid in a Brazil shirt, screaming at goals.
• Real match footage cut in: a free kick, Mbappe taking on a defender, the trophy lifted in gold confetti.
• The line in big type: Poora India Watchega. Then the end card, ZEE5 official streaming partner, subscribe now, and the broadcast sponsors.

The structure is simple and it is the point. Every scene is a different India, a different team, a different kind of fan, and the same television. The word poora, all, is what the film shows.

Nobody in the film is at the World Cup. Everybody in the film is at the World Cup. That is what a broadcaster sells.

Watchega, not dekhega

The campaign line is Hinglish on purpose. Watchega, watch with a Hindi future tense, is how an Indian fan actually says it. Talented's Sanket Audhi, a lifelong football fan himself, described the World Cup as ritual, heartbreak, pride, and the line was written to sound like a fan rather than a broadcaster. The argument over whether it should have been dekhega became part of the campaign's conversation, which is the best thing that can happen to a line.

The shoot, in under a week

First December Films had, in its own words, two days between shoot and launch. The credit sheet shows how a film with a dozen households and forty faces gets made at that speed. Casting director Hussain Contractor cast and appears in it. An acting coach, Shawn Williams, and a choreographer, Vitthal Patil, are credited, because every scene is a crowd reacting to a goal on cue and the reactions had to be real and timed. A storyboard and AI artist, Pritesh, pre-visualised the film so the day could be planned shot by shot.

Production designer Mayur Magicz and art director Pankaj built the living rooms as a set of Indias: the old Bombay flat with the lace curtains, the young flat with the string lights, the family home with the wooden cabinet. Costume stylist Rashi Verma dressed every household in a different national kit. Vikas Vasudevan shot it warm and close, faces lit by the screen.

Post and sound

Priyank Kumar cut it against the clock, with Avinash Shukla on the grade and Rohit Padwal on the online, including the type treatment for Poora India Watchega. Sandeep Patil composed the music and Joseph George mixed it. The film was delivered in six languages, English, Hindi, Bangla, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu, with regional versions such as Pura Kerala Watchega following on the ZEE5 channel.

Where it sat

• 2 June 2026: Zee announces the FIFA rights deal, covering 39 FIFA events to 2034.
• 5 to 8 June 2026: Countdown cutdowns go live on the ZEE5 channel, three of them passing 28 to 35 million views each.
• 11 June 2026: The World Cup kicks off and the Poora India Watchega film launches on ZEE5.
• 12 June onward: Coverage in afaqs, Impact, Social Samosa, Medianews4u and Adgully, with a campaign amplified across creator integrations and more than 200 websites.
• July 2026: afaqs publishes the making-of, and knockout-stage films carry the line on.

What the film proves

This is the reference to reach for when a brief needs any of the following:

• a broadcast or streaming launch film made in days, not weeks
• a sports film without access to the sport: fans, screens and living rooms
• a dozen households and forty performers directed to react on cue
• a Hinglish line built to be argued about
• a single film delivered in six languages

See more of our work, the director's reel and credits, or send us a script and a date.

Credits

• Client: ZEE5 and Unite8 Sports, Zee Entertainment
• Agency: Talented
• Production house: First December Films
• Director: Atul Kattukaran
• Executive Producer: Ganesh Pareek
• Senior Producer: Imran Patel
• Producer: Ankit Singh
• Director of Photography: Vikas Vasudevan
• Production Designer: Mayur Magicz
• Casting: Hussain Contractor
• Offline Editor: Priyank Kumar
• Grade: Avinash Shukla
• Online: Rohit Padwal
• Music: Sandeep Patil
• Sound: Joseph George