Gajab Beijjati! Anurag Kashyap ANGRY On Netflix CEO, Says ‘Always Knew These Tech Guys Are Dumb’

Anurag Kashyap has lashed out at Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos after the latter questioned Sacred Games as the platform’s debut India original. In a fiery post on Threads, Kashyap didn’t mince words and called Sarandos “the definition of dumb” for suggesting the show may not have been the best starting point.

Sarandos made the comment during his appearance on Nikhil Kamath’s WTF podcast. While reflecting on Netflix’s early India strategy, he said they may have done better with something “more populist” than Sacred Games. 

That didn’t sit well with Kashyap, who co-directed the 2018 series with Vikramaditya Motwane. The gritty thriller starred Saif Ali Khan and Nawazuddin Siddiqui and earned praise for pushing the envelope on Indian OTT storytelling.

Anurag Kashyap Slams Ted Sarandos, Calls Him ‘Dumb’

Ted Sarandos said on the podcast, “Our very first Indian original show was Sacred Games. And I thought - This is going to be great...But what I didn’t understand was that we were introducing a brand new kind of entertainment in a country the size of India.”

He added, “If I did it all over again, would I have done Sacred Games a couple of years later, and done things that were more populist instead? Maybe.”

Reacting to this, Kashyap shared a screenshot of the statement on Threads and wrote: “He should have started with Saas-Bahu... he would have done well. Which he is doing now. I always knew the tech guys are dumb when it comes to storytelling, but Ted Sarandos is the definition of dumb is what I didn’t know. Good to discover that. This explains everything now.”

The post immediately gained attention online, with many fans and creators agreeing with Kashyap’s take on valuing bold content over formulaic shows.

About Sacred Games

Sacred Games was Netflix India’s first original series, directed by Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane. It was based on Vikram Chandra’s novel and dropped in 2018. The story follows Mumbai cop Sartaj Singh, played by Saif Ali Khan, who gets a strange warning from gangster Ganesh Gaitonde, played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui. What follows is a tense chase to stop something disastrous.

The first season got a lot of praise for its intense plot, bold storytelling, and dark, cinematic style. It became a big deal in the Indian OTT space. Season 2 came in 2019 and went deeper into Gaitonde’s backstory, adding new characters like Guruji (Pankaj Tripathi). Though it stuck to the dark tone, many felt the story wasn’t as tight as the first one.

In the end, Sacred Games was cancelled after just two seasons, leaving a lot of fans with unanswered questions.

The show carved a new space for Indian narratives, going beyond typical “TV-safe” formulas. While its second season received mixed reactions, it still holds significance as a bold experiment that paid off in influence, if not always in numbers.

Coming back to the conflict, whether Sarandos responds to Kashyap’s outburst remains to be seen