Sacred Games season 1 brought Netflix in the open in India, but brace yourself, as the season 2 is only going to get bigger when it will be released on the Independence Day. According to the experts, Netflix has will be spending whooping Rs. 100 crores on the series, that’s the most that any streaming service has ever spend in India for making original content.
Earlier, the highest investment were in the range of Rs. 3-4 crores per episode in India for a series offering 12 episodes according to the experts.
Neha Singh, Director, International Originals, Netflix India said ‘Sacred Games 2 is definitely our most complex show that has gone into production till date. We knew at the end of season one that we had to make season two bigger, better and juicier for the audience. She continued by saying ‘For us, the audience comes first and we want to make sure they have a really fantastic experience watching the show’.
Sinha said that Sacred Games season 1 was complex to shoot, they had two directors with two different set of teams shooting for different narratives of the show. Neeraj Ghaywan, who also directed Masaan, shot with Saif Ali Khan while Anurag Kashyap shot with Nawazuddin Siddiqui.
The crew associated with the show shot at, at least 112 different locations for over 100 days, and filmed for the final footage of over 400 minutes. To give it some perspective, 400 mins means around 3.5 Bollywood movies. They had a crew of over 3,500 people.
According to Netflix, the show used more post-production facilities on board to enrich the final product when compared to average Bollywood movie.
Sinha said, ‘In that sense, it is definitely our biggest project till date and a really large-scale show driven by a very complex shoot.’ She added ‘Everything is ramped up in this season (2nd season), the cast is bigger and everything is pacy’.
Jehil Thakkar, Partner, Deloitte India said that it is given that Netflix is showing this level of passion for the Indian series, he added ‘Sacred Games is clearly a fabulous anchor for Netflix to create curiosity around its content and get more people to try the service. It’s definitely an opportunity for the foreign network to showcase and cement itself as a platform with strong Indian content and back it with great investment and production values’.
Thakkar said, the online streaming service providers are following in the footsteps of any major film studio, he said, in a year, only two or three shows from these providers gets a pedestal like this, taking into consideration both investment and promotions.
Netflix said that after the success of Sacred Games season 1, things did change a bit, apart from the budget, they introduced the concept of Showrunner. The showrunner in this case if the creator and lead writer of the show Vikramaditya Motwane. The showrunner not only makes the calls on the sets like cosmetics, appearance of the actors, the theme and etcetera, but also is one of the two people from creative to stay on the show until the launch from the beginning.
Netflix said they understand how important the story is, whether it’s a show or a film, hence, as the season 1 came to an end, they created a room just for writers where they can spend time in isolation and work on the script.
