Neeraj Pandey did not set out to top Netflix‘s global non-English charts. In fact, the Indian filmmaker behind “Taskaree: The Smuggler’s Web” – whose credits include “A Wednesday,” “Special 26,” “Baby” and the blockbuster biopic “M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story” – says he was not even aware such a category existed.
“When you’re making a show, you’re not thinking of all these things,” Pandey tells Variety during a conversation in London, where he was scouting locations for an upcoming film. “I didn’t even know that concept, that there is a non-English category.”
The genesis of “Taskaree,” a seven-episode crime thriller that follows an Indian customs team at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport as it battles an international smuggling syndicate, traces back to a casual conversation between Pandey and his former assistant director Tinu Suresh Desai – now a director in his own right – sometime around 2021 or 2022. That chat led to an introduction to customs officer Sumit Sarkar, whose candid insights into how smuggling networks and customs operations actually function became the backbone of the series. “I got to know things that I could have never imagined,” Pandey says, adding that the show’s specificity is precisely what he believes made it connect with audiences.
The script, co-written with Vipul K. Rawal, took the better part of a year to a year and a half to complete. Netflix came on board early, with the streamer expressing enthusiasm from the first pitch. The series – which also stars Sharad Kelkar, Amruta Khanvilkar, Zoya Afroz, Nandish Sandhu and Anurag Sinha, and was co-directed by Raghav M. Jairath – reached No. 1 on Netflix’s global non-English TV list.
Casting Emraan Hashmi in the lead was a deliberate act of counter-programming. “No one has seen him in this sort of a role,” Pandey says. “He was game to do something that had nothing of what his normal image is.”
Like its predecessor “Khakee,” “Taskaree” was always conceived as a multi-season franchise. Pandey is a firm believer in the long-form model that streaming enables. “You can get into long format and then longer format through seasons,” he says, noting that the freedom to tell five or six hours of story in a single run is something cinema simply cannot offer.
“Khakee” Pandey’s acclaimed Netflix anthology franchise, has its origins in an equally unlikely meeting – this time with Indian Police Service officer Amit Lodha, who approached Pandey as a fan before eventually narrating the story that would become “Khakee: The Bihar Chapter.” Pandey encouraged Lodha to write the story as a book, even committing to buy the rights before a single word had been set down on paper. Loda’s resulting book, “Bihar Diaries,” formed the basis of the first season.
The second installment, “Khakee: The Bengal Chapter,” was all-out fiction rather than a real-life adaptation, and served as something of a homecoming for Pandey, who was born and raised in Howrah, West Bengal. A third season is now in the works, returning to the franchise’s roots with a story once again based on a real police officer, though Pandey declined to share further details. “It’s still WIP,” he says.
Pandey’s other marquee streaming property, “Special Ops,” began life around 2018-19 in a conversation with a broadcaster who wanted content for what was then streamer Hotstar, now known as JioHotstar. The show’s ambition was apparent from the outset: it was filmed across the globe and broke new ground for Indian streaming content on multiple fronts. When COVID-19 curtailed production on a full second season, Pandey released “Special Ops 1.5: The Himmat Story,” a four-episode prequel, to satisfy demand from the show’s fanbase. “Special Ops 2” followed and landed on JioHotstar in July 2025. “We strive to tell bigger stories, better stories with every season,” Pandey says.
While Friday Storytellers – the digital arm of Pandey’s film production banner Friday Filmworks, which he co-founded with Shital Bhatia in 2008 – has dominated the streaming conversation, Pandey is now pivoting back toward theatrical releases in a significant way. The company has identified a slate of five Hindi films for the next three years, several of which have been in development for the past year and a half to two years. Two productions are set to begin this year – Pandey himself will direct the first, while a director for the second is yet to be announced. At least one project in the slate is earmarked for a major global release, with plans to dub it in English.
He is also bullish on the wider Hindi film industry’s prospects. Pandey predicts that 2026 will outperform 2025 – and that theatrical footfalls may finally return to pre-pandemic levels. “We had really touched the bottom. There was no further way down,” he said, describing the industry’s recent trajectory as an inevitable part of its cyclical nature, and adding that he has held this view since last year. “I personally feel that 2026 will be the year.”
He pushed back on the notion that only large-scale productions can succeed at the multiplex. “It will not only be the event films,” Pandey said. “It will also be films that will be maybe small, but a big idea – what we refer to as the little, big film.” He cited the Malayalam-language film industry’s content-first ethos as a model for where Hindi cinema could eventually land, while acknowledging that building that kind of audience trust is a long game. “It’s years and years of harvesting,” he says. “The fault lies with the makers and producers who tend to think they know what the audience wants. The audience is diverse – why would they want to see something predictable?”
Since the interview was conducted, Pandey has found himself at the center of a significant controversy. The teaser for his upcoming Manoj Bajpayee-starrer, announced under the title “Ghooskhor Pandat” as part of Netflix’s 2026 India slate, triggered immediate backlash, with petitioners alleging that pairing the word “Pandat” – a caste-associated term – with “ghooskhor,” meaning bribe-taker, amounted to a defamatory stereotype targeting the Brahmin community. The controversy escalated to the Supreme Court, and Pandey subsequently confirmed the title had been withdrawn and that all promotional material had been taken down, with a new title yet to be announced.
Pandey offered no comment when asked by Variety about an upcoming biopic of legendary composer Rahul Dev Burman.
