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Indian auteur Sriram Raghavan is developing a new thriller for Matchbox Shots set in the tonal zone of his 2007 film “Johnny Gaddaar,” as the Mumbai production house grows its slate on the strength of the global Netflix
success of war series “Operation Safed Sagar.”
“Johnny Gaddaar” was a twist-laden neo-noir heist thriller that marked Neil Nitin Mukesh’s screen debut alongside Dharmendra, and has since grown into a cult favorite.
“I am personally working on a couple of subjects with them,” Raghavan tells Variety. “One is a true crime sort of thing which I am sort of adapting in my own way. And the other is a fiction, it is a thriller, and I mean next year is 20 years of ‘Johnny Gaddaar,’ so something I want to do in that zone.” The director has yet to settle on a title.
Beyond the Raghavan projects, Matchbox’s slate includes a second season of “Scoop” for Netflix with Hansal Mehta, a still-untitled dark comedy thriller from Vasan Bala and another untitled thriller directed by Jasmeet Reen.
Matchbox’s Sanjay Routray says the range is deliberate. “We want to cater to a diverse audience, both in India and internationally,” he says. “The common thread across all those titles is that each one is an untold or uniquely told story with genuine entertainment value. The genre changes, the scale changes, the format changes. The promise to the audience does not.”
Meanwhile, Raghavan traces his relationship with Matchbox back to its earliest days when it was known as Matchbox Pictures. “Matchbox began, I mean as a company, with ‘Andhadhun,'” he says. “So we tasted success very, very early, and I am very happy that now ‘Safed Sagar’ is like doing sort of similar sort of wave, creating waves in the OTT [streaming] kind of a thing.”
The 2018 blind-pianist thriller “Andhadhun” became the company’s breakout hit, grossing $62.4 million worldwide, against a production budget of INR160 million ($1.7 million), a return the company has since held up as the benchmark for the rest of its slate. Much of that total came from an unexpected market: released in China in 2019 under the title “Piano Player,” “Andhadhun” opened to $10.6 million and went on to gross $47.1 million there, more than three times its India total of $13 million, at the time making it the fifth-highest-grossing Indian film ever released in the Middle Kingdom, trailing only “Dangal,” “Secret Superstar,” “Bajrangi Bhaijaan” and “Hindi Medium.”
Routray points to “Andhadhun” as his go-to example of finding commercial potential in unlikely material. “On paper, a thriller about a blind pianist sounds like a niche festival film,” he says. “On screen, ‘Andhadhun’ became a global blockbuster. The hook was always there. It was just about believing in the director and backing the story with everything we had.”
Raghavan also directed the Matchbox-produced “Merry Christmas,” with Routray producing, and was involved with “Monica, O My Darling.” “It is a comfort zone for me,” Raghavan says. “I work there, Sanjay is a friend of mine, and we know each other for many, many years.”
Netflix series “Operation Safed Sagar”was filmed inside active air force installations under strict operational protocols, using actual MiG fighter jets alongside cockpit simulation technology built specifically for the production. Routray says the shoot, which involved a crew of more than 450 people working at altitudes above 16,000 feet, tested the limits of what the company had built over the years. “At that height there is no existing infrastructure,” he says. “Logistics, power, accommodation, safety, medical support, all of it had to be created from scratch and then sustained for a long-haul shoot. It also proved to us, and to our partners, that Matchbox can deliver at that scale.”
By its second week on the platform, the series had climbed to No. 2 on Netflix’s global chart for non-English shows, landed in the top 10 in 40 territories and stayed at No. 1 in India. It’s the second consecutive Matchbox series to reach those heights: Anubhav Sinha’s “IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack” also debuted at global No. 2 and India No. 1, a feat Matchbox says makes it the only Indian production house to place back-to-back series near the top of Netflix’s worldwide charts.
The company’s push beyond Hindi-language projects produced its first Malayalam-language film, “Thrishanku,” a romantic comedy starring Arjun Ashokan and Anna Ben that Matchbox produced alongside Lacuna Pictures and Clock Tower Pictures & Co. Written and directed by Achyuth Vinayak, the film released in theaters in 2023, following a couple whose plan to elope is complicated when the man’s sister decides to elope as well. Matchbox has also been acquiring book rights, including“The Gurugram School Murder” and “The Johnson and Johnson Files,” as it builds out a pipeline of owned intellectual property, the same approach that turned the book “Flight into Fear” into “IC 814.”
For Matchbox’s Patil, success today comes down to one word. “Longevity,” she says. “Stories that stay with audiences long after the release window has passed. In our experience, if a story achieves longevity, the numbers and the recognition tend to follow on their own. They are outcomes, not targets.”
That philosophy extends to how the company spends. Patil says Matchbox invests in development on projects long before a greenlight or outside funding arrives, money committed with no guarantee of a return. “We know exactly how much we can afford to lose on a bet, and we never bet more than that,” she says. “That is what allows us to keep taking punts year after year.” Routray adds that the discipline cuts both ways: “For any film to land, there has to be a perfect marriage between the numbers and the creative intent. If either side of that equation is broken, we would rather walk away early than force a project into existence. Some of our best decisions have been the films we did not make.”
Routray also points to a fact he thinks audiences rarely register: overall theatrical footfalls have declined even as the cost of going to the cinema has risen. “The film has to be worth leaving the house for,” he says. “That reality shapes what we greenlight and how we make it, far more than people realize.”
Matchbox is also exploring animation, AI-assisted production and other emerging formats, while recommitting to theatrical releases alongside its streaming slate. Summing up the company’s next five years, Routray keeps it to three words: “Content remains constant.”
