Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap is no stranger to his films being shelved, delayed, or banned. However, when his Netflix project was shelved over a year after being greenlit, it took a severe toll on his mental and physical well-being.
Anurag Kashyap on impact of shelved project
Following the controversy around Saif Ali Khan’s Prime Video show Tandav, OTT platforms reportedly became more cautious about approving potentially sensitive scripts. At the time, Kashyap was working on an adaptation of Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City. Owing to the prevailing situation in the country then, Netflix eventually backed out of the project. Anurag recently opened up about how deeply it affected him.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter India, he said the project had been officially greenlit and that he had written a 900-page script. “It was greenlit by Netflix. I told them, ‘Please read the book.’ Nobody except one person on the team read the book… There was silence for one-and-a-half years, and no one came and told me ‘it’s not happening.’ That was even more triggering.”
The filmmaker said he didn’t realise he was grieving the film until he sought therapy. “When you invest so much time, it becomes your baby. It was a miscarriage,” he said.
He revealed that the grief severely impacted his health. “In that grieving, I had a heart attack. I was on blood thinners, a vaccine reacted badly, I got asthma, so I was on steroids… My mind was buzzing… I started drinking and ordering from Zomato all the time. My drinking got very bad.” Kashyap eventually checked himself into rehab to recover.
How he returned to work
Recalling how he returned to work, he shared that filmmaker Zoya Akhtar reached out to him. “Luckily, Zoya Akhtar called me. She said, ‘Will you play yourself in Made in Heaven?’ I said, ‘I’m lying in bed, my leg is gone, I’m in a wheelchair.’”
Zoya reportedly insisted, saying, “We’ll put the wheelchair in the scene.” Kashyap said that call helped him step out of isolation and get back to work.
In another interview, Anurag said Netflix did not provide a specific reason for backing out. However, he speculated that either the script was too sensitive for the political climate at the time or the platform did not want to be associated with him then.
For the unversed, Maximum City is a non-fiction book that explores multiple perspectives on life in Mumbai. The book was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist.