Sardar Khan and gang is back and going digital. The popular streaming website Netflix will be offering a specially edited version of the gangster saga ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’ as an eight-part series starting December which will be available worldwide.
Directed by Anurag Kashyap, the film which went onto become a cult, starred Manoj Bajpai, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Richa Chadha and Huma Qureshi among the vast star cast which spanned across two movies. The movie before the release travelled to various film festivals including Cannes (in 2012) and Sundance, getting positive reviews for its story and acting. The movie will stream with English, Spanish, French, Arabic and Chinese subtitles from the first week of December. Also, rumours are ripe that the movie will have a third installment as the writers and the producers are working on the script.
Discussing about the digital market at a panel at the Film Bazaar in Goa, director Anurag Kashyap said that web-series was the new way of creating content and monetising and this was the first of its kind attempt at presenting Wasseypur as a series on Netflix. He also said that the creators do not have to worry about the censors in India and will have creative freedom to make better content.
The rights for the movie in the North American region are with Cinelicious, who worked as a digital content aggregator with Film Karavan, producer Guneet Monga and Anurag Kashyap’s Phantom Films to finalise the deal with Netflix.
The announcement comes at the time of when the streaming service is planning to launch in India next year. The company is planning to launch original Bollywood and animation programming aimed at non-US markets, according to Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and He said that Netflix would spend $5 billion on content next year, including acquiring talents.