Premium
This is an archive article published on June 7, 2023

Vikramaditya Motwane says Netflix isn’t doing enough to ‘push Indian content’, points out ‘Rana Naidu, Class are remakes’

Vikramaditya Motwane said that while Netflix has delivered hits like Rana Naidu and Class, these shows are remakes of foreign titles.

vikramaditya motwaneVikramaditya Motwane said Netflix should be pushing more Indian content. (Photo: Express Archives)
Listen to this article
Vikramaditya Motwane says Netflix isn’t doing enough to ‘push Indian content’, points out ‘Rana Naidu, Class are remakes’
x
00:00
1x 1.5x 1.8x

Director Vikramaditya Motwane, who recently received a lot of acclaim for his Prime Video series Jubilee, discussed in a new interview that even though Netflix has delivered hits like Rana Naidu and Class, at the end of the day, they are remakes of foreign titles, and the platform isn’t doing enough to push original Indian stories. Motwane’s Sacred Games was the first Netflix Indian original that made a mark in the Indian OTT space.

Motwane, in a chat with The Streaming Show podcast, said, “Yes, Rana Naidu and Class have done extremely well for you (Netflix), but that’s Ray Donovan and Elite. It’s not original Indian content.” The filmmaker said that “you can do remakes” but “it’s your duty, your responsibility to push original Indian content out there. We are always going to go out there and find the quickest solution possible because you need to deliver something to the streaming service.”

He acknowledged that things need to be delivered in a few months’ time, and it is in those restrictive circumstances that the streamer might think, “let’s get that remake and that format and end up doing it.” Motwane said that with producing remakes for OTT, “you are back to exactly where you were with films, exactly where you were with television and that’s not a good place to be.”

Apart from Sacred Games and Jubilee, on which he served as the showrunner, Motwane was also one of the producers on Netflix’s Decoupled. The Udaan director said that he was involved in a “creative” capacity on the show in terms of giving feedback on the scripts, and making phone calls when the team needed to be made. He shared that he found the scripts to be “fantastic,” but he felt, “at the end of the day, there were too many cooks in that room.”

He said, “There’s too many opinions, too many ways to do it. There was the sense that we need to be able to homogenise this show for a larger audience as opposed to letting it be this beast that kind of offends people, which is what the scripts were. That’s why I liked them. I loved the scripts because, ‘Wow. This is so interestingly offensive in a funny sort of way’. But the show at the end of the day wasn’t that offensive. (What was on paper) wasn’t exactly what we saw on screen and there are multiple reasons for that.” He concluded by saying, “I could go into them but I don’t want to point any fingers right now.”

Decoupled, which released in 2021, starred R Madhavan and Surveen Chawla. The show wasn’t renewed for a second season.

Click here to follow Screen Digital on YouTube and stay updated with the latest from the world of cinema.

Latest Comment
Post Comment
Read Comments
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement