Humble Politician Nograj sequel to arrive on streaming platform

Danish Sait and director Saad Khan had earlier announced a sequel to the political satire, Humble Politician Nograj. However, the sequel to the satirical political drama will not be a feature but rather a series released on a streaming platform.

The duo is putting together this 10-episode series in collaboration with Applause Entertainment. With this series, the content studio headed by CEO Sameer Nair, known for series like Mind the Malhotras, Hostages, and the Indian version of The Office, will now be foraying into Kannada.

“Working on Nograj sequel is getting a lot crazier,” says Danish Sait, who also elaborates on why he preferred to make the sequel as a series. “A film limits your creativity, which will not be the case with a series.” Danish adds, “The 10-episode series in Kannada will also have a mix of Hindi and other languages, depending on the character’s native language.”

The sequel will go on floors by November or December this year. “The streaming platforms have got a calendar, and they will decide on the release date, which will be sometime in 2020,” adds the multi-faceted artiste who made his debut with Humble Politician Nograj.

Incidentally, Humble Politician Nograj was the first Kannada film to make it to Amazon Prime Video.

It was during the process of making the film that Danish realised a big-screen project constantly makes you think of the returns even before the product is ready. “Thinking about whether the film will work in A and B centres, or figuring out the target audience, makes us try to reach out to anybody and everybody. On the other hand, a series demands a certain quality, and we are targeting specific audiences. Here, we have space for creative and hard work, rather than number crunching. Since I am a creative person first, I decided to take the sequel of Humble Nograj on the digital platform,” he explains.

Saad and Danish are currently finalising the star cast. While Vijay Chendoor, who played Manjunath, will be on board, they are also looking to rope in Disha Madaan.

On his content studio's foray into Kannada, Sameer Nair says, “I have been a big fan of Danish Sait, and have been following him for many years on radio. I also got to know his sister (Kubbra Sait) in Mumbai. During one of our conversations, we were talking about Humble Politician Nograj, and we thought that now that he has made a movie, we should take it forward as a series. I thought it was a brilliant idea, and we have decided to go ahead.” Adding that Danish and writer-director Saad Khan are already on the job, Sameer Nair tells us, “It is going to be a fun show. It will be multilingual, with a mix of Kanglish, and a smattering of Tamil and Hindi. We are trying to keep it as realistic as possible for the modern digital audience.”