What started out as an experiment has become a box office force. Mirzapur The Movie, which has collected more than Rs. 170 crore at the domestic box office, has done more than just extend the popular Prime Video series to the big screen. mid-day has learnt that the success of the Pankaj Tripathi, Ali Fazal, and Rasika Dugal-starrer has prompted conversations within Excel Entertainment about the possibility of a second theatrical offering.

According to an industry insider, the team is overjoyed at the film’s run and confident that there is a theatrical audience for it.

“Next week, the actors, director Gurmmeet Singh, and writer Puneet Krishna will meet producers Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani, to discuss the way forward. There are several ideas being discussed, but nothing has been formally locked,” said the insider.

The timing is interesting because the crime drama’s fourth season is in development.

The insider added, “Earlier, the focus was on taking Mirzapur forward as a series by prioritizing the fourth season. Now, there is a realization that the audience will also come to theatres for these characters. If the story and the scale make sense, the team will explore another film.”

What do you get when you bring together the makers of the slice-of-life series Gullak and the violent Mirzapur? A delightful comedy. Gullak director Amrit Raj Gupta and Mirzapur creator Puneet Krishna have joined forces for Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper, which tells the story of an ordinary man who becomes a gigolo to support his family. While Manav Kaul leads the nine-part Netflix series, he is joined by Tillotama Shome and Shweta Basu Prasad.

In a chat with mid-day, Kaul says he was so intrigued by the titular part that he chased creator Krishna and producer Ram Sampath.

“I was a mad actor hungry for a [good] story. I sent Puneet and Ram scores of texts to land the audition. I knew I could crack this character. His voice would echo in my ears long after the narration was over,” says the actor.

As the showrunner-creator, Krishna had to bring alive a world that had not only goons, guns and gore, but also love and family values. The most critical part was researching the world that the story was set in.

“We met a lot of [gigolos]; they were open about their experiences. What surprised us was the amount of respect in those interactions. The men address the women as Ma’am. The more we dug into these stories, we realised there is agency, desire and vulnerability.”

Sampath, who met Krishna during the making of Bangistan (2015), says his vision made him back the series. “Puneet has the foresight to know what will be relevant a few years from now. That makes his stories out of the box.”

'Tribhuvan Mishra: CA Topper' will be released on the platform on July 18.

Rasika Dugal believes that the most special projects happen when you least expect them. Just when she was ready to take a break, the actor was offered Rohan Sippy’s adaptation of the American series, Unreal.

“I wanted to take some time off, read, and watch movies. Rohan called me for the show, and I have always wanted to work with him,” begins Dugal. A week after the call, she was facing the camera for the Indian adaptation, which also stars Aadar Jain and depicts the behind-the-scenes working of a reality show.

“It was really last minute on the project. But in the madness, I found a part that no one has offered me. My character is snappy, sarcastic, and has a sharp sense of humour. The sarcasm and quickness of the original is present. I liked the series so much that I got bangs for it,” she laughs.

If 2024 has offered Dugal something new, there’s also something old in store. She has wrapped up the shoot of the third season of Mirzapur. Even though she has been playing Beena Tripathi—a quiet homemaker who knows how to get her way in a male-dominated household—in the crime drama for eight years, becoming her all over again was a challenge.

“I’m never prepared enough for Beena. Our characters keep evolving. The journey between the seasons is transformative, so you have to reflect that lapse. Beena is so interesting. [But before reprising the role] I sometimes worry that I have forgotten her. Here, I have to credit the writing that helped me understand the woman. Once, writer Puneet Krishna told me, ‘Aapne sab achche se kiya. The beauty is that you played Beena with dignity’. Before every season, I remind myself of the best compliment I have ever got. I tell myself, ‘Don’t forget to play her with dignity.’”

Adding to the diverse worlds she is inhabiting this year is Kartavya. Shah Rukh Khan’s production, headlined by Saif Ali Khan and her, is reportedly an investigative thriller. Even as she is tight-lipped about the project, she can’t help but underline that it has nourished her as an actor.

“I had a ball shooting for it. I want roles that will take the life out of me. I want to be so depleted that I have nothing to give for a bit.”

Last month, mid-day had reported that the third season of Mirzapur will roll in Mumbai by June-end (Back to guns, gore and grit, June 13). While the cast — led by Pankaj Tripathi, Ali Fazal and Shweta Tripathi Sharma — have begun shooting for the crime drama in Film City, Fazal aka Guddu bhaiya is simultaneously in prep mode. We hear the actor is picking up the basics of wrestling to do justice to the heavy-duty action that has been woven into the script.

Mirzapur has always focused on action, with chase sequences and gun battles being a mainstay in the series. But creators Karan Anshuman and Puneet Krishna are keen to up the ante for the upcoming season that will see Fazal’s character locking horns with Kaleen bhaiya and his henchmen.

A source reveals that when Fazal read the script, he decided to forgo body doubles, thus ensuring that the action set-pieces look authentic. “Ali has been training in wrestling for the past four weeks. He does five sessions a week. The wrestling moves will be woven into the action sequences. He has also bulked up for the role.”

While the actor is currently filming dramatic sequences, the action scenes will be canned later in the stint.  

Besides the crime drama, Fazal will soon be seen in Vishal Bhardwaj’s Khufiya, and the international film, Kandahar, with Gerard Butler.

The wild success of the second season of Mirzapur in October 2020 paved the way for Kaleen Bhaiya and Co. to return for a third instalment. Even though Amazon Prime Video officially announced the third season only in April this year, the production team had begun the groundwork on the Pankaj Tripathi, Ali Fazal, Shweta Tripathi Sharma and Rasika Dugal-starrer since early 2022. Now, it is learnt that the series — which revolves around a gangster family in Uttar Pradesh — will go on floors in Mumbai on June 24.

Sources tell mid-day that the cast, including Vijay Varma and Isha Talwar, began workshops last week. “The first leg will be shot across the suburbs. A chunk of the crime drama will be filmed at a set in Film City, Goregaon. After the Mumbai leg is wrapped up, creators Karan Anshuman and Puneet Krishna will take the action to Banaras. The final locations, however, have yet to be locked,” reveals a source.

The major action sequences have been included in the Mumbai schedule. The source adds, “The actors will train over the next week with action choreographers for the portions.”

Mirzapur's Devdutt Dadda Tyagi is 3 feet 5 inches, and still intimidating. He makes you think, "I never want to be caught on the wrong side of this guy." The actor who breathed life into Tyagi, M M Faruqi, is loving it. "People are telling me, 'height gayi gaddhe mein; you really scared us'. I take that as a big compliment; it never happens with me in real life!" Faruqi, known by his screen name Lilliput, is taking a dig at his stature. Living with Achondroplasia, popularly known as drawrfism, has meant that the actor has had to make do with comic roles for much of his career. The last time he played an intimidating role was in 1998 on the television horror show, Woh. It's been a while since then that he has managed to make news. Season 2 of hit Amazon Prime show Mirzapur seems to have placed him in an unlikely spot, hitting the right notes with the audience.

Faruqi agrees that work has been scant. In 2012's, he did Luck Luck ki Baat, and in 2018, he appeared as himself in Kaamyaab. Later, came a small role in the TV show, Vidya. He has waited eight years to land a part that would get him noticed. A press report in 2017, in fact, quoted him saying that he was living off his daughter's earnings because no one was willing to give a chance to the film scripts he had worked on.

"This role, I've been waiting for all my life," he says of the part that the web series makers Gurmmeet Singh and Puneet Krishna, offered him. "They made sure they extracted a superb performance from me. And that viewers have liked Dadda, makes me very happy."

Survival in Bollywood hinges on networking, meeting the right people at social dos. And yet, he says, it's often that people "remember the person". "Someone will meet you one day, and the next day, tell someone else [about you], 'you know, I met Lilliput, and he's just so nice. He should get a role'. And then, finally one day, someone calls you." During this interview, he recalls meeting late actor Rishi Kapoor a few years ago. "He had the habit of spewing abuses while he spoke. He told me, 'why aren't you acting, working.' I listened to him for a while, and then said, 'I can't understand the grammar of the language this industry speaks'. I have never been able to get work easily, because I can't network. It's a misconception that if you are good, you get work. There are just too many people [vying for the same job], and only those who get seen a lot, get work."

Web series and OTT platforms, then, are obviously a godsend for character actors like him. It's the only space they can hope to experiment. "In the movies, everyone is tethered like cattle. Web series seem to have come as some sort of good luck for writers and actors craving freedom," he says.

To play Dadda Tyagi, Bihar's unlikely Bahubali, the soft-spoken actor says he didn't do much prep other than be determined to play the role as well as it was written. In fact, the first time it was offered to him, he turned it down. "I told them it's a role meant for the likes of Naseeruddin Shah, not me! But the makers insisted, and said, if anyone can do it, it was me. And then, suddenly I was Dadda, a man who used his insecurities to push himself up in life."

While the love has been pouring in from fans, Mirzapur 2's success hasn't brought him new offers. The man who knows the importance of patience, says, "Let's wait and see what God has in store."

In a move that was telling of the patriarchal society it was set in, women had precious little to do as goons, guns and gore took centre-stage in the first season of Mirzapur. The second edition brings a necessary change in that regard — where Rasika Dugal's Beena takes charge of her life, Shweta Tripathi Sharma's Golu trades her books for guns to avenge her sister and boyfriend's deaths. Isha Talwar's Madhuri Yadav too unapologetically harbours political ambitions.

Point out to director Gurmmeet Singh how the female characters, at last, have agency, and he credits creator-writer Puneet Krishna for the development. "Puneet doesn't analyse if he is writing for a male or female character. For him, every character is a hero. Women in Mirzapur are equally tough because they have to surive there. It was not a conscious call to empower the women."

Krishna admits that the female characters didn't enjoy much screen presence in the opening season. "They have more screen time in this outing, but we had not planned it; we went with the flow. They are equally prominent because they [pull the strings] and the dynamics are driven by the story."

It's common for the prime players to be written off, thus adding to the show's plot twists. Singh exclaims, "I am scared that if I begin liking a character, Puneet will kill him in the next episode! We are not scared of killing the important players because we can have fun with those alive."

While the series is criticized for its excessive violence, director Mihir Desai asserts they practise self-censorship. "If a scene doesn't call for violence, we don't show it unnecessarily. This time, the characters have matured after their loss."

On October 30, author Surender Mohan Pathak told mid-day how he was enraged that the second season of Mirzapur had wrongly depicted his book Dhabba as an erotica (below). On Saturday, the makers issued an apology to Pathak on social media. The apology, signed by Krishna, stated that within three weeks, either the "unrelated voiceover" will be removed or the book cover will be blurred.

Popular Hindi fiction writer Surender Mohan Pathak is seeing red at the second season of Mirzapur. In the third episode of the Amazon Prime Video series, Kulbhushan Kharbanda's character is seen reading Pathak's novel, Dhabba, as the voiceover describes an erotic scene. Claiming that the content suggested in the voiceover is dramatically different from the original text of Dhabba, the veteran writer has described it as a violation of the Copyright Act and written to the production house Excel Entertainment, seeking the removal of the said scene.

"I am waiting for their response to my notice. If I don't hear from them within the stipulated period of one week, I'll file a case in Delhi High Court against the makers of Mirzapur 2," says Pathak.

Best known for his crime fiction series Vimal, the author, 80, says he was unaware of the development until his fans brought it to his notice. "When the complaints started pouring in, my daughter showed me the scene. The makers added their own filthy, disgusting [lines] as a voiceover and passed it off as the content of my novel, which was published 10 years ago. They used cheap porn to titillate the viewers, and to tarnish my image as a well-established mystery writer. In the voiceover, a character named Baldev Raj is mentioned; there is no such character in Dhabba. Many readers, who haven't read the novel, could get a wrong impression that the author, in his old age, has lost his mind and resorted to writing pornography to gain publicity. I consider it a conspiracy to defame me."

The novel features in another scene in the second episode, where Rasika Dugal's character takes charge of her life after suffering sexual abuse and battling suicidal thoughts. One might argue it's a powerful scene that establishes the importance of women characters in a largely male-driven plot.

When writing, Pathak counts depiction of sex and violence as off-limits. "I have written 270 mystery novels and thrillers in the past six decades, and they have gained immense popularity due to their gripping storyline and my distinctive style of writing. Never have I depicted violence and sex in graphic detail in any of my works," he asserts.

mid-day reached out to writer-creator Puneet Krishna, Excel Entertainment and Amazon Prime Video, who remained unavailable for comment.

What was the brief for the soundtrack of Bangistan?
The brief was to create interesting, satirical and fun music for a film that is taking on the issue of religious extremism in a really wacky manner. My aim was to create something that reflected the film's heart as well as its spirit. Karan Anshuman (director), Puneet Krishna (lyricist) and I hit it off right from the first meeting and the songs came together quite organically post that.

There are many moments worth remembering in the making. One interesting story is the creation of Hogi Kranti. The song itself was something we decided on just days before principal shooting commenced, so we worked on it at a feverish pace and I was super excited for the team to hear it. I remember sending Hogi Kranti to Karan and Puneet when they had just reached Ladakh. It took ages for them to hear it because of bad network, so I had a nervous few days. When Karan got back saying they loved the song, it was a well-earned relief.

Which song stood out for you?
It's hard to pick one on this soundtrack because every song has a great reason to exist in the context of the film and that is a rarity nowadays. Nonetheless, Maula stands out for me because of its breadth and emotional content. It's a journey of a song. It's also one of the best vocals I've ever recorded. Rituraj (Mohanty) made the song his own by learning and understand ing the lyrics deeply. I also think Siddharth Basrur has done an amazing job on Meri Zidd. It's the performer's conviction that makes a song come to life.

You've also given vocals on Maula and Meri Zidd.
I sing most of my scratches in order to give the entire team a reference of what I have in mind. My mix engineer, Yash Divecha, retains what he thinks are key elements of those takes in order to retain the feel of the original scratch. I don't argue with him because I believe he has better taste than me.

You've featured a bunch of interesting singers we usually don't hear often, like Siddharth Basrur and Suraj Jagan. How did you choose them?
We simply went with the best singer for each song. The album has a lot of diversity from qawwali-EDM to gypsy influences to punk rock to Sufiana, which is why the eclectic casting makes sense when you hear the album. The common factor is that they are all good storytellers and they should all be heard a lot more in the mainstream. Of course, none of this can happen without producers like Ritesh (Sidhwani) and Farhan (Akhtar), who encouraged us to make bold choices.

Lyricist Puneet Krishna has gone crazy with coining the phrases and songs.
Puneet is a special talent. He can say a lot in a few lines and that's an exceptional gift. He has also got great craft and a twisted sense of humour, as does Karan. Both of them had a very clear idea of the lyrical content of the songs, but they were almost always pleasantly surprised by the direction in which I pushed the songs. They are amazingly open and generous collaborators, who gave me plenty of room to express my ideas.

The soundtrack has a strong rock connection.
That's because we wanted to plant the soundtrack in a younger, more irreverent place than conventional film music to milk it for honesty, irony and sarcasm. Rock music is our weapon of choice for acts of subversion. In short, it's an edgy, crazy comedy ­ rock fit the bill.

What was it like working with your wife Sona Mohapatra on Ishq Karenge?
It's always exciting. She applies her 'Sona Filter' on everything she does, though Ishq Karenge has her in a slightly different avatar. She has changed her texture a bit to fit into the song without losing her identity.
I'm a big admirer of that strong, unique personality she has as an artiste.

Will we be hearing non-filmi music from you in the coming months?
Hopefully, you've already heard the four songs I recorded on a non-film musicbased television show. It has some interesting musical contrasts like live drum 'n bass with Rajasthani folk, Nirguni lyrics with rock music, etc., all connected to a concept of Bhoomi - ­ love for the land we come from. Besides that, there's a lot more on the anvil. Non-film music is liberating and I hope to increase my output in the coming years.