Indian auteur Sriram Raghavan is developing a new thriller for Matchbox Shots set in the tonal zone of his 2007 film “Johnny Gaddaar,” as the Mumbai production house grows its slate on the strength of the global Netflix success of war series “Operation Safed Sagar.”
“Johnny Gaddaar” was a twist-laden neo-noir heist thriller that marked Neil Nitin Mukesh’s screen debut alongside Dharmendra, and has since grown into a cult favorite.
“I am personally working on a couple of subjects with them,” Raghavan tells Variety. “One is a true crime sort of thing which I am sort of adapting in my own way. And the other is a fiction, it is a thriller, and I mean next year is 20 years of ‘Johnny Gaddaar,’ so something I want to do in that zone.” The director has yet to settle on a title.
Beyond the Raghavan projects, Matchbox’s slate includes a second season of “Scoop” for Netflix with Hansal Mehta, a still-untitled dark comedy thriller from Vasan Bala and another untitled thriller directed by Jasmeet Reen.
Matchbox’s Sanjay Routray says the range is deliberate. “We want to cater to a diverse audience, both in India and internationally,” he says. “The common thread across all those titles is that each one is an untold or uniquely told story with genuine entertainment value. The genre changes, the scale changes, the format changes. The promise to the audience does not.”
