Humsafar to be dubbed in Spanish, 15 years on; director Sarmad Khoosat: "If only there were royalties"

Humsafar, the 2011 HUM TV drama starring Fawad Khan and Mahira Khan, is set to be dubbed and released in Spanish, according to a HUM TV post that director Sarmad Khoosat shared on Instagram on Tuesday, Dawn Images reported on Wednesday 21 October. Khoosat's caption was five words: "If only there were royalties", with a blank-faced emoji.

HUM TV has not said which platform or country the Spanish version is for, or when it will be available.

The drama

Humsafar ran for 23 episodes from 24 September 2011 to 3 March 2012 on HUM TV. Farhat Ishtiaq adapted it from her own novel, Khoosat directed it and Momina Duraid produced it, with Fawad Khan as Ashar and Mahira Khan as Khirad, and Naveen Waqar as Sara. It was later shown in India on Zee Zindagi in 2014 and streamed on ZEE5 and Netflix, according to its Wikipedia entry. A Spanish dub would take it to a new language market a decade and a half after it first aired.

Why Khoosat mentioned royalties

Royalties are the payments cast and crew get each time a show they made is rerun or sold again. In Pakistan they largely disappeared in the 1990s, when leading PTV actors reportedly gave them up in exchange for higher fees, and private channels followed PTV's lead, Dawn Images noted. That means a hit such as Humsafar can be sold abroad and rerun for years without anything going back to the people who made it.

The issue has come up before. Veteran actors told Dawn in 2021 that they regretted giving up those rights, and Mahira Khan said in March 2026 that while big names could manage without royalties, junior artists and crew often could not.

If you are a writer, actor or crew member paid per project, our freelancer tax calculator shows what tax is due on that income.