- By Aarushi Raina
- Sun, 08 Jun 2025 06:06 PM (IST)
- Source:JND
Sacred Games, one of Netflix’s most popular thrillers, is based on Vikram Chandra's 2006 novel of the same name. Starring Saif Ali Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui, the series has secured a significant place in the hearts of viewers. However, recent remarks by Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos about choosing the crime drama as India’s first original show suggest it may not have been the ideal decision. Anurag Kashyap, who directed Sacred Games alongside Vikramaditya Motwane, reacted to Sarandos’ comments, calling him 'dumb' and stating that he should have started with Saas Bahu show instead.
Ted Sarandos recently opened up about Netflix’s Indian original programming with Sacred Games and reflected on whether choosing more populist shows instead of the crime series would have been better for the Indian market. On Nikhil Kamath's podcast, he said, "It took us a couple of years to get the product-market fit right. Our very first Indian original show was Sacred Games. And I thought, ‘This is going to be great. People in India love movies. This is a TV show that feels as big as a movie, it has movie stars.’ What’s interesting about it is that it was very, very novel, but what I didn’t understand that we were introducing a brand new kind of entertainment in a country the size of India.”
He added, “For me, if I did it all over again, would I have done Sacred Games a couple of years later, and did things that were more populist (instead)? Maybe. But we knew that India was going to be a slower journey to get to where we wanted to get to. But it’s a great prize, at the end of the day. The addressable market is growing in the next couple of years in India, so it’s exciting.”
This comment on the series didn't sit well with Anurag Kashyap. He slammed the Netflix CEO on his Instagram. He wrote, "He should have started with Saas Bahu .. he would have done well. Which he is doing now Z I always knew the tech guys are dumb when it comes to story telling but @tedsarandos is the definition of dumb is what I didn’t know . Good to discover that. This explains everything now."
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Soon after his reaction, Sacred Games fans also shared their views. One user wrote, "Scared Games was a crown Jewl of indian Storytelling. I remember I was in Vancouver when it was released. I decided to come back to India getting inspired by what I saw. Hi Anurag Sir, you and Vikram Sir have done for storytelling what no contemporary Filmmaker could. Maybe one day stars align and you both create something amazing too." Another user commented, "No wonder The Royals get a new season while Kaala paani is cancelled." Another comment read, "Sacred games introduced Netflix to india. It introduced the idea of web series."
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Sacred Games, a neo-noir crime thriller, starred Saif Ali Khan as a cop and Nawazuddin Siddiqui as a most-wanted criminal. Besides them, the series also featured Radhika Apte, Pankaj Tripathi, Kalki Koechlin, Surveen Chawla, and Ranvir Shorey, among many others. The first season premiered in 2018. It was followed by a second season in 2019, which received mixed reviews. As a result, the series was not continued afterwards.
