Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar may just be Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s most ambitious project yet. The director, who is trademarked by his glittering, larger-than-life sets and complex storytelling is releasing his first-ever series that’s slated to release on Netflix sometime soon. The OTT giant also backed the project, which features a star cast of Manisha Koirala, Sonakshi Sinha, Aditi Rao Hydari, Sharmin Segal, Richa Chadha, and Sanjeeda Sheikh.
Similar to Bhansali’s latest directorial, Gangubai Kathiawadi which won Alia Bhatt a series of awards, Heeramandi will offer a peek into the lives of courtesans, except this time it’s set in the backdrop of pre-independence India.
Poised as a historical drama, Heeramandi will transport audiences back to the 1940s, to a dazzling diamond market in the walled city of Lahore. What started out as a cultural centre during the Mughal era, where women from Afghanistan and Uzbekistan danced and sang in front of the emperors, turned into a prostitution hub when the British developed brothels there during their colonial rule. The series will explore both the personal and political alliances and riffs between the courtesans and their clients during the peak of the Freedom Movement in the 1940s.
As it turns out, Heeramandi is Bhansali’s 14-year-long passion project. Speaking to ANI about finally creating a series around it, the director said: “Heeramandi is an important milestone in my journey as a filmmaker. This is an epic, first-of-its-kind series based on the courtesans of Lahore. It is an ambitious, grand and all-encompassing series; therefore I am nervous yet excited about making it. I am looking forward to my partnership with Netflix and bringing Heeramandi to audiences all over the world.”
Going by the first look of the series, Bhansali has not held back on production costs. Here’s how much it cost to create the highly anticipated project.
Heeramandi: Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who is known for making big-budget movies, is spending these many Crores on his upcoming Netflix series
Going by reports in News18 and Times of India, Netflix invested about Rs 200 crore for the production of the historical drama. The same reports claim that Bhansali himself is taking home a director’s fee of Rs 60 – 65 crore.
The remaining amount will be segregated into production budgets and paychecks for the cast of actors. Earlier reports had claimed that veteran actor Mumtaz had been approached for a pivotal role in the series, but she had turned down the offer.
Heeramandi will soon be available for streaming on Netflix.
