Fans of Sacred Games have a reason to celebrate. The second season of the critically acclaimed Netflix original will have Pankaj Tripathi in a more substantial role, according to reports he will play the main villain. Tripathi, in his cameo appearance in season one, plays a godman called Guruji. Nawazuddin Siddiqui—who plays the big bad villain on the show, Ganesh Gaitonde—calls him his ‘teesra baap’. Gaitonde throughout the first season narrates his origin story, and how his life was influenced by his ‘three fathers’. According to a report by DNA, the second season will explore Tripathi’s character further. “The makers have already planned a second season, the shooting of which will start in November in Mumbai. Pankaj, who appears as Guruji, only in three scenes apart from his voiceover in the first season, will have a central role in the second season alongside Nawazuddin as he is the real mastermind,” a source told the website. The show will have three more seasons, as previously hinted by lead actor Saif Ali Khan. “The series will be made in four parts as it’s a 1,000-page book and we’ve only got through one-third of it now. We begin shooting for the next season in September. Each season will have eight episodes, so overall, the series will have 32 episodes,” Saif had told DNA in May. The series, co-directed be Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane, opened to positive reviews all over the world. The gripping series, spread across eight episodes, delves into the life of Sartaj Singh and how his path crosses with dreaded gangster Ganesh Gaitonde. Radhika Apte plays a RAW officer. Kashyap in an interview to HT had confirmed that Tripathi’s character will become more central in future episodes. After Sacred Games, Netflix is already set to launch Ghoul, its first Indian original horror series, on August 24. It will star Radhika with Manav Kaul, and has also been produced by Phantom Films. Follow @htshowbiz for more ott:10:ht-tv_listing-desktop<doc-sep>If you're making your first Netflix original, you have to swing big. This is a tradition that started with House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. Now, as the company expands its worldwide empire, Netflix India has debuted its first original series: Sacred Games, based on the novel by Vikram Chandra. It's a big, magnificent swing, and the first season hits it out of the park. Sacred Games, based on the novel by Vikram Chandra, is the story of Ganesh Gaitonde (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), a notorious gangster who contacts police officer Sartaj Singh (Saif Ali Khan) with a threat against the city of Mumbai. Singh ends up working with federal agent Anjali Mathur (Radhika Apte) as they try to solve the elusive criminal's puzzle. Though Singh is our de facto hero and the knight in shining armor, Gaitonde is the central character, whose life is pieced together in flashbacks throughout the eight episodes. Structurally, the show is part Da Vinci Code, part Slumdog Millionaire. It also harkens significantly to streaming sibling Narcos, with its use of multiple languages and immersion in the underworld. It bears the unmistakable artistic signature of directors/producers Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane, a sensibility found in India's independent features and short films. India boasts a voracious film and television audience, but almost all TV shows in India are reality shows or soap operas ("serials"). In 2017, Amazon bet on the sports drama Inside Edge, which performed positively and earned a second season. Notably, Kashyap's 2012 opus Gangs of Wasseypur (also starring Siddiqui) used to be on Netflix – not as the two four-hour films as which it debuted, but as an eight-episode miniseries. Sacred Games faces pressure on the international stage, due in part to Netflix's reach and in part to the popularity of Chandra's novel. Image: netflix Though Sacred Games is a rare form of Indian entertainment, it's hard to imagine Sacred Games in any format besides this series due to the rich craftsmanship of the show. Gaitonde's world and life are overwhelmingly immersive, as is the ominous trail he leaves for Singh. There's an English dub available, but the original Hindi (and sometimes English, Marathi, or Punjabi) is vital to the viewing experience. The dialect is harsh and guttural and curses – whether you understand them or not – sting with the sharpness of their delivery. It's also violent – like Game of Thrones violent or Daredevil violent – which may surprise audiences who only know India for colorful song-and-dance rom-coms. But violence has been a staple of Bollywood for decades – it even used to be in those sweeping musicals about love. Though Sacred Games sets up a world in which you expect assault, rape, and gun fights, they fit into Gaitonde's uncouth reality through careful production and cinematography. Siddiqui, a proven talent, is nothing short of hypnotic as Gaitonde with all his rage and ambition. (Lion's Sunny Pawar plays a young version of the gangster, ensuring he won't be pigeonholed as "adorable child" for long.) Though not fully a household name even in India, Sacred Games could propel him to the international versatility of an Irrfan Khan or an Anupam Kher. Image: netflix Apte nails her portrayal of Mathur, perhaps because she makes it so unremarkable. Women on India's screens are almost always airbrushed, lightened, perhaps wearing colored contracts, and caked in makeup within an inch of their lives. They are a fantasy, but Mathur (and Apte herself) is a real woman, a highly competent women in a competitive field and patriarchal society. She's driven by duty and justice while Singh has a more a personal stake (Gaitonde knew his father). Khan, better known for popular commercial films, delivers a subtle performance that is one of his best. I worked for Khan during production of his 2014 film Happy Ending, and based on conversations at that time it's clear that Sacred Games is the kind of project he's spent years trying to find. He was frustrated with the stagnancy of commercial Bollywood and the lack of new stories to tell, intrigued by darkness and folklore, which interweave subtly throughout Sacred Games. With such a powerful debut, Sacred Games sets an impressive bar for India's Netflix originals, and creates a show unlike anything else available on the streaming platform. With the stars' tight film schedules, a second season might be challenging, but Netflix is undoubtedly eyeing it. You'll want it too, after you take a breather for this one. This game is not for the faint of heart. Sacred Games is now streaming on Netflix.<doc-sep>Few shows start by threatening a major city and implying that said threat is the work of god. Then again, Netflix’s Sacred Games isn’t most shows. Over the course of eight hourlong episodes, Netflix‘s Indian original walks the line between being a gritty cop drama, a warning about the coming apocalypse, and a religious-leaning fable. It’s a crazy series, and it has an insane ending to match. Based on Vikram Chandra’s 2006 novel of the same name, Sacred Games follows Inspector Sartaj Singh (Saif Ali Khan), a cop who just wants to do a good job. But at every turn his morality is punished by a corrupt system. That changes once Sartaj comes in contact with Ganesh Gaitonde (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), a crime lord responsible for the deaths of hundreds. After tracking Sartaj down, Gaitonde offers him a riddle. If he can find Gaitonde’s three fathers he may be able to save the city that he loves from impending doom 25 days from now. Gaitonde then ends his own life. The series is filled with blood, betrayal, and boobs, so yeah: it’s a fairly typical installment of prestige-leaning television in 2018. But there’s also good reason why the show’s final scene likely made you pause. Here’s what we know about Sacred Games‘ finale, theories about what actually happened, and the possibilities for a Season 2. What happened in Sacred Games‘ ending? Gaitonde started the series by making a pretty clear promise to Sartaj. If Sartaj didn’t figure out the crime lord’s riddle in 25 days, everyone in Mumbai would die save for Trivedi (Chittaranjan Tripathy), one of Gaitonde’s complicated father figures. In Sacred Games‘ final episode, with only a a day left and with a dead partner, Sartaj finds the base of the attack. After putting together the final clues left by Gaitonde, he discovers an underground bunker filled with enough gas masks and supplies to survive a major attack. It looks like Gaitonde’s attack on Mumbai is going to be a nuclear one. That’s when Sartaj finds something more shocking than evidence of a nuclear attack — Trivedi’s dead body. If this man can’t survive Gaitonde’s wrath, what hope do Sartaj and Mumbai have? Is Trivedi really dead? From the beginning, Gaitonde made it clear that Trivedi wouldn’t die. So either something went horribly wrong, or he really isn’t dead. Some sleuths on Reddit have pointed to the room’s water, gas mask, packaged food, and what seems to be an air supply line as evidence that Trivedi is actually alive. If he’s faking his death, how long will he fake it? And when will he wake back up? Others think that, yes, Trivedi really is dead. Either Gaitonde tricked the man to submit to his own death, or Gaitonde didn’t plan on killing himself. Gaitonde ending his own life set off a chain reaction which resulted in Trivedi’s death. Based on the latter theory, Gaitonde presumably tied up and tortured Trivedi. He then left the older man in the bunker, intending to return to him at a later date. But since 11 days have passed since Gaitonde shot himself and Sartaj finds Trivedi in the bunker, there’s a good chance the “safe” man died of starvation. Is Gaitonde really dead? Despite Sacred Games‘ trippy first episode, it seems like this crime lord really is dead. When Gaitonde first shot himself, did he think that he could come back after death as a sort of god? Possibly. But since the only supernatural motif the show explored was Gaitonde’s wink after his death — something that could have been imagined by Sartaj — it feels safe to say that he’s gone for good. All of these plans to possibly start a global war are being executed posthumously, not unlike a better version of Jigsaw. Will there be a Sacred Games Season 2? At the moment it’s unclear. But there’s certainly a big enough cliffhanger for Netflix to consider making another season. Stream Sacred Games on Netflix<doc-sep>
With over a 100,000 searches, India's first Netflix original Sacred Games already features in the Google top trends. After marque shows like Crown and Narcos, the series is turning out to be a game changer for Netflix, and in particular for India’s nascent digital video-on-demand industry. While Sacred Games has all the quintessential requisites of an entertaining show that combines politics, crime, and drama, the strategic weekend launch of the series worked wonders. “The initial feedback in terms of viewership is more than what any Indian content has ever received on the platform,” said Varun Grover, one of the writers working on the series. The series has been directed by Vikramaditya Motwane and Anurag Kashyap and written by Grover along with Smita Singh, and Vasanth Nath. After the eight power-packed episodes people are already talking of the second season. While Grover said they had a second season in mind while putting together the first season, sources in the industry confirm the second season is being written. The series based on Vikram Chandra’s novel by the same name focuses on Sartaj Singh (played by Saif Ali Khan), a seasoned and cynical police officer, summoned by an anonymous tip one morning, a voice which promises him an opportunity to capture the powerful gangster Ganesh Gaitonde (played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui). Released across the world with subtitles in Russian, Finnish, Arabic, French, Hebrew, Spanish, German, Dutch, Polish, Turkish, Chinese, Romanian, Swedish, Norwegian, Thai, Japanese, Korean, Italian, and Brazilian Portuguese-Sacred Games is the writer’s attempt to break through clichés. “Bollywood content has always been associated with song and dance sequences and mushy romance. Thanks to no censor on the digital platform we have had the opportunity to exercise our right to creativity and tried to break stereotypes about content produced from this part of the world,” Grover added. While the popularity of the show means more audience to the next series, it also adds up to help Netflix see a growth in revenues. According to a Statista survey of ‘Estimated streaming revenues of Netflix in India from 2017 to 2020’Netflix is expected to generate approximately $328.3 million with its Indian streaming segment in 2020. Does breaking stereotypes stop with one India original series Sacred Games though? No. Netflix has already announced its second original series from India – Ghoul. Again from Anurag Kashyap’s Phantom Films, Ghoul will be a three-part horror story starring Radhika Apte. Ghoul is expected to have an August 24 release and mark Netflix's foray into the horror genre in India.