Hansal Mehta reacts to Netflix firing person who rejected Scam 1992, says Hotstar didn’t do Lootere justice: ‘It was released apologetically’

Hansal Mehta opened up about the difference in working with Netflix, SonyLiv, and Prime Video, and said that his show Lootere was done dirty by Hotstar.

By: Entertainment Desk

New Delhi | September 17, 2025 04:17 PM IST

4 min read

Hansal Mehta said that every streamer rejected Scam 1992.

Filmmaker Hansal Mehta finds himself in the relatively unique position of having worked with every major streaming player in India — Netflix, Prime Video, the service formerly known as Hotstar, and most memorably, SonyLiv. He said that he has great equations with executives at each platform, but didn’t hold back as he criticised Hotstar for the way it handled his show Lootere. He said that the show was delayed by a year during which he had a back-and-forth with the platform about dubbing the English-language parts of the series in Hindi, and when the show finally saw the light of day, it was given an ‘apologetic release’.

In an interview with Suchin Mehrotra, Hansal said, “Lootere was stuck, because after it was made, there was a debate about language. It was about Somalian pirates! Are they going to speak in Hindi? They said, ‘We need to release the thing in Hindi, dub it in Hindi’. We put our foot down, but they just kept arguing… Then they went to focus groups, and the focus groups in tier two cities said that their favourite character was the Somali pirate, who doesn’t speak in Hindi at all… The focus groups supported our theory, which is how, after nearly a year, the show actually saw light of day. Honestly, the show did not get the love it deserved from the platform. It was released apologetically. It was released on a weekly basis. It’s a show that was meant to be binged.”

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Hansal was also asked about the rumour that Netflix fired the person who rejected Scam 1992, and he said, “I don’t know about that.” Recently, Anurag Kashyap said that Netflix fired the executives who passed on Scam 1992, as he criticised the streamer’s Indian arm. “What happened when Sacred Games came out? There was no Netflix in India, but people bought a subscription to watch the show. Therefore, you must create something that people will watch. The same holds true for Paatal Lok and Scam 1992,” he shared during a chat with Galatta Plus. He added, “Scam 1992 changed the life of SonyLIV. You create a great show, and what’s Netflix’s reaction? ‘Who passed Scam? Fire that person.’ That’s how they do it.”

It was in an interview with Pinkvilla that Hansal revealed how difficult it was to get a streamer to buy Scam 1992. When everybody rejected it and the show went to SonyLiv, Hansal was actually disappointed, because he didn’t know if people even subscribe to the platform. “My team’s morale had dropped, so I had to lift their morale, and we somehow lifted our morale completed the show on time, and rest is history. I think we made long-form history.” In an interview with Indian Express, Netflix’s Monika Shergill spoke about missing out on the opportunity to get Scam, and said, “I mean, would we have wanted it to be on Netflix? Absolutely yes. It’s a great show, it’s a defining show and it would have found a very natural home on Netflix. But I think every project, story has its own destiny. There are so many things that you admire about what’s on other services; other services might be thinking, ‘Oh this title from Netflix could have been on ours.’ It’s meant to be like that, it had to be on SonyLIV.”

Hansal now has a deal with Netflix, which began with his show Scoop. Incidentally, the show was commissioned at Prime Video, but was taken over by Netflix after a bidding war.

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