Debacle of their production house Phantom can’t hamper his 25-year friendship with filmmaker Kashyap, says Sacred Games 2 show-runner Vikramaditya Motwane
Shaheen Parkar (MID-DAY; August 2, 2019)

Whether or not the # MeToo movement in Bollywood aptly penalised those accused of sexual harassment is debatable, but it did cripple Phantom Films after Vikas Bahl, one of the production house’s four pillars, found himself in the infamous list. Yet, the debacle of the company couldn’t hamper the equation that co-founders Vikramaditya Motwane and Anurag Kashyap share, as the former tells us while discussing his forthcoming offering, Sacred Games 2.

“I have known him for 25 years and he is my closest friend. We are absolutely comfortable [working together]. At the same time, we can even kill each other. We have our creative differences. The Phantom story may be over, but I will continue to collaborate with Anurag,” says Motwane, who is the show-runner of Kashyap-directed Sacred Games 2, after co-directing the first season of Netflix’s project with him.

Pick out any list that chronicles noteworthy digital originals cropping out of India, and it’s hard to miss the mention of the Saif Ali Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui starrer. Evidently then, we aren’t surprised when Motewane says he is often prodded by eager fans, even in washrooms, on the fate of the cherished characters. Given the secrecy attached with the production, all that he can do to assuage them is promise that “All loose ends will tie up.”

Even before it set the bar for other web shows from the country, Sacred Games was a front-runner in the fact that it featured Khan as the first Bollywood bigwig to take the digital plunge. It’s possibly the responsibility that attaches itself with this feat that had Khan up his act. “Saif gets so caught up in the zone that [sometimes], fours hours after the shoot is over, he will remember a certain close-up shot and [mull over it]. He’ll then ask if it could be shot again. I would have to tell him it is [late at] night and that he must go back to sleep. Saif can be really funny. He gets extremely excited, like a child.”