Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos opens up about Sacred Games slow growth in India, director Anurag Kashyap says "He should have started with Saas Bahu"

Sacred Games premiered at a time when binge-watching hadn’t yet become mainstream in India and digital streaming was still gaining momentum.

In a recent podcast chat with Nikhil Kamath, Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos looked back at the streaming giant’s initial creative ventures in India, highlighting Sacred Games as a pivotal project that marked Netflix’s entry into the Indian market.

Talking to Nikhil, Ted said, “Our very first Indian original show is Sacred Games. I thought this was gonna be great. They say the people in India love movies. This is a TV show that feels as big as a movie and has movie stars. It was very, very novel, but what I didn’t understand was that we were introducing a brand new kind of entertainment in a country the size of India,” Sarandos said.

He further said, “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. We knew that India was going to be a slower journey…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.”

Sacred Games premiered at a time when binge-watching hadn’t yet become mainstream in India and digital streaming was still gaining momentum.

However, Anurag Kashyap, the show's co-creator, did not take the remarks made by Ted very well. Anurag took to social media to voice his disapproval, posting a screenshot of a news article that quoted Sarandos' comments along with a scathing comment on Threads.

“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 ted sarandos is the definition of dumb is what I didn’t know . Good to discover that. This explains everything now," he wrote.

Released in 2018, Sacred Games was Netflix' first India original show and it received positive reviews. Directed by Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane, the show starred Saif Ali Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui. The second season however, received mixed reviews after which the show was cancelled for further seasons.