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Anurag Kashyap set a high benchmark for Indian streaming when he made Sacred Games for Netflix in 2018. However, in the many years since then, things have changed and Anurag is now a vocal critic of the platform. After the release of the British show Adolescence on the same platform, Anurag called the Indian wing of the company “dishonest and morally corrupt” as they would never greenlight something like that in India. Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s Chief Content Officer, was recently asked to respond to Anurag’s comments and she said that Netflix India caters to a wide array of audience and not just a “small group of people who have one definition of what they think is good or premium.”
In a chat with The Hollywood Reporter India, Bela called Anurag “very talented” but said that she did not agree with Anurag’s presumption as to what Netflix India would or would not greenlight. “I disagree with the premise. I think people from the outside looking in can sort of decide what they think happens and doesn’t happen,” she said and added that when the UK team read the first script of Adolescence, it was “undeniable.” Calling it an “incredible piece of writing”, she insisted that there was no “leader in any country I have around the world including India that wouldn’t read that and go, ‘This is so obvious to green light’.”
Bela stressed that they don’t address a “narrow demographic” and have to cater to a large number of paying customers, which is why, they need to have something for everyone. “We also know that in India, there are many Indias in India. People have lots of different tastes and we don’t judge them from a very specific point of view. ‘Oh, we like this very specific thing because we might live in a big metropolitan city or we don’t like this’,” she said.
She then shared that in India, they have different kinds of shows for different kinds of audience on Netflix and gave examples of The Ba***ds of Bollywood, Black Warrant and The Great Indian Kapil Show. “We are trying to really entertain the world. We are not trying to entertain a small group of people who have one definition of what they think is good or premium. We are trying to entertain people all around the world,” she said.
Previously, Anurag had said that he was extremely disappointed in Netflix India as they would have never supported a show like Adolescence. “I am numb and envious and jealous that someone can go and make that,” he wrote on Instagram and added, “Netflix.in is a totally opposite s**tshow. If they were pitched this, most probably they would have rejected it or turned it into a 90 minute film (that too seems like an impossibility because it doesn’t have an ending that is black and white),” Addressing Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix and Bela, he wrote, “This hypocrisy of Ted and Bela vis a vis the indian market of 1.4 billion people, where there only interest is increase in subscriptions and nothing else.”
After Sacred Games, Anurag was in talks with Netflix India for Maximum City, which was eventually shelved.
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