Friendship, betrayal, love is what you will see in Vikram chandra’s novel Sacred Games. Sacred Games sees Bollywood stars Saif Ali Khan and Radhika Apte in crucial roles .
The eight-part series, filmed mainly in Hindi and dubbed in various other languages is the first of seven Indian series that Netflix has commissioned.
“India is seeing the biggest and fastest investment in content for any country we have launched in,” said Erik Barmack, Netflix’s vice-president of international originals. Most of all, though, the 900-page book is a story about Mumbai. Sprawling yet focused, there is something cinematic in the writing.
“Right from the beginning even before the book was published there was already interest in doing something cinematic with it. Before the book was released (in 2006) it had been optioned by a major feature film company in Hollywood. They tried for a couple of years but it became clear to both them and me that it needed a much longer format,” said Chandra on the phone from the US.
In 2016 The company launched in India , Subscriptions start at 500 rupees (around £5) a month.
Other Indian series in the pipeline include Ghoul, a horror set in a covert detention centre, and Crocodile, a murder mystery set in Goa.
The availability of cheap data and the burgeoning number of smartphone users have made India one of the world’s fastest-growing internet markets.
Yet Netflix faces stiff competition from homegrown apps like Hotstar and Voot, while Amazon Prime has 11 million monthly subscribers, compared with Netflix’s five million.
