Sacred Games Season 1 All Episodes
A link in their pasts leads an honest cop to a fugitive gang boss, whose cryptic warning spurs the officer on a quest to save Mumbai from cataclysm.
Motwane began filming in September 2017. Kashyap started filming after the Mukkabaaz (2017) was completed, and finished shooting in January 2018. Motwane and Kashyap filmed separately; Motwane directed the present-day scenes with Khan, and Kashyap filmed 1980s Bombay with Siddiqui. Motwane called the separate filming an “experiment”, and Kashyap found it “painfully difficult” to find “pockets of Bombay which has kept itself like it is”. Chandra was working on the novel while Kashyap was working on his film, Black Friday (2007), and he “knew the real-life parallels” in the novel. Kashyap said that he shot the series as he would a film. Motwane said that except for omitting small details, they “stuck to the spirit of the book”. He tried to balance the series, “making it for a worldwide audience [and not alienating] everybody over here.” Motwane said that he enjoyed telling a story without being confined to a three-act structure. Chandra served as a script consultant in the series.
Sacred Games was shot in several Mumbai locations, including the Byculla neighbourhood, and Motwane said that its period setting presented a “huge logistical challenge”. Although the time period of Gaitonde’s story remained unchanged, the present-day narrative was shifted to the present from the early 2000s. Motwane said that there is a “similar sort of government [today] and the vibes are the same, so the threat felt a lot more present”. According to Sonawane, “A lot of changes happened on the shoot”. Several shots in the script, such as the introduction of Gaitonde as a child, were top-angle shots. He filmed Sartaj Singh’s scenes with “worn-out but very warm lenses that reflect how nothing is working out in Sartaj’s life.” The color yellow was used in Gaitonde’s scenes to signify that the “guru that he has begun to follow.” Bajaj shot for 27 days, leaving when he became involved in another project; Fonseca shot the remaining scenes, using spherical lenses to “demarcate” the world. The shootout at Gaitonde’s house was filmed at three locations, with long takes on Steadicam and hand-held cameras. A scene with Sait, involving frontal nudity, was filmed in seven takes.