Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, during a chat in Mashable India’s The Bombay Journey YouTube series, opened up about the state of Netflix’s much-loved series ‘Sacred Games’, and the leak of his unreleased first film ‘Paanch’ on torrent sites.
For those caught unaware, Anurag co-directed both the first and second seasons of ‘Sacred Games’. However, the second one wasn’t well received, and now as per Anurag, Netflix has pulled the plug on season three of the show. Although, Netflix has not given an update on whether the show is officially cancelled or not.
Anurag said in Hindi, “Vikram Motwane was driving Sacred Games. Ten days before I was supposed to go shoot Mukkabaaz, he asked me to come on board. I told him I was always interested, but they had a problem with me. Some local people had told them that I didn’t have a female audience. It was my zone, and they eventually came around… Season three was supposed to come out, but they shut it down, Netflix would know why.”
He added that after the ‘Tandav’ controversy, all streaming platforms are now careful. ‘Tandav’, which was released on Prime Video, was in controversy regarding a scene involving actor Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, which led to multiple court cases being filed against the cast and crew. “OTT ki aaj ki date mein himmat nahi hai, Tandav ke baad sab dar gaye hain,” Anurag said.
Lastly, talking about the leak of his film ‘Paanch’, Anurag said, “I didn’t leak it. That’s what people believe. I showed it to people, I made a print for myself, which I had distributed among people, one of them could’ve leaked it. But it wasn’t me. Black Friday got pirated, and I used to buy those copies in bulk, put them in proper boxes, and distribute it in the US. I would tell them to sell it. It got pirated and somehow reached Pakistan. The people who pirated it got a message through to me via the band Junoon. They said, ‘Your film made us so much money, if you ever need funding, we’ll help’. I said, ‘No, thank you’.”
Anurag’s latest project ‘Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat’ is set for release on February 3.
