A couple of days ago, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap called Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos "the definition of dumb" after he insinuated that he should have launched the streaming giant in India with something "more populist" than Sacred Games in 2018. Helmed by Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane, the gangster drama series starred Saif Ali Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Now, Siddiqui has also expressed disappointment in the direction Indian streaming has been heading in lately. While he claimed that he's only filming a show now, five years after Sacred Games season 2, he has done over half a dozen films across OTT platforms like Netflix India, Prime Video India, and ZEE5. "Irrespective of any platform or any process, it starts out as great and then turns into a market. Baazar toh ban hi gaya hai. Studios in India keep saying we need 'commercial' qualities attached to every project. I don't agree with that. If the product is of a certain quality, then the commercial aspect eventually gets attached to it organically," Siddiqui tells SCREEN exclusively. "If you keep giving so much importance to the commercial aspects in art, then it'll cause a lot of damage. Toh yehi hua hai, over a period of time, shuruat bahut passion se hoti hai, fir uska dhandha ban jata hai (That's what's happened, they start off with a lot of passion, then they just turn it into a business)," Siddiqui adds. Both Siddiqui and Kashyap have maintained that the Hindi film industry is no different than streaming right now. "Ab jo chor hote hain, voh kahan se creative ho sakte hain. Humne south se churaya, kabhi yahan se churaya, kabhi wahan se churaya. Even some cult films, which became hits, unke scenes bhi chori kare hue hain. Isko itna normalise kardiya gaya ki chori hai toh kya hua? (Now, how can thieves be creative? We’ve stolen from the South, sometimes from here, sometimes from there. Even some cult films that became hits have scenes that were copied. This has been so normalised that it’s like — so what if it’s stolen?)," Siddiqui pointed out in an interview with Puja Talwar earlier this year. "And then actors and directors start quitting — like Anurag Kashyap, who was bringing in good work," he added, referring to Kashyap's recent proclamation that he's relocated to the South to work there. "I’ve left Mumbai. I want to stay away from film people. The industry has become too toxic. Everyone is chasing unrealistic targets, trying to make the next Rs 500 or Rs 800 crore film," Kashyap told The Hindu. Also Read: Nawazuddin Siddiqui emulated Al Pacino on first day of Gangs Of Wasseypur shoot, Anurag Kashyap asked him, ‘Bewakuf hai kya tu?’ Previously, Kashyap and Siddiqui have collaborated on the Gangs of Wasseypur franchise (2012) and Raman Raghav 2.0 (2016). They have also shared the screen space in the 2023 film Haddi.
