After tasting success with such productions as Kedarnath (2018) and Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019), Ronnie Screwvala’s RSVP Movies is ready to set foot in the digital space. The company has joined hands with Premnath Rajagopalan of Blue Monkey Films for a multi-season espionage thriller series titled Panthers.
Filmmaker Rensil D’Silva, who is presently waiting for the direct-to-digital release of his thriller Dial 100, starring Manoj Bajpayee, Neena Gupta and Sakshi Tanwar, has been tapped to direct and showrun the upcoming streaming show.
The multi-season series stays raw and rooted to the Indo-Pak spy games of the late 60s and early 70s. A major highlight of the series is the conspiracy surrounding the hijack of a plane flown by Rajiv Gandhi, son of the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, in 1971. Rajiv Gandhi would later become Prime Minister after the assassination of his mother in 1984.
Panthers is the story of India’s burgeoning spy agency against a politically volatile setting,” said Screwvala. “It is as eye-opening as it is gripping and boasts of the right balance of realism and entertainment, making it the perfect project for us at RSVP to get behind. Rensil is the right man at the helm of this one.”
D’Silva said, “The nation is embracing true stories like never before. All the covert operations mentioned in ‘Panthers’ have taken place in real life. This series is a tribute to the daring feats of the RAW agency before it ascended to legendary status.”
“The series is all about cloak and dagger games played between nations,” said producer Mukesh Radha Krishna Tak. “It is the saga of our faceless men and women, living and dying in the shadows with courage, determination and valour.”
Rajagopalan added: “We at Blue Monkey Films are excited to further our association with Ronnie and RSVP as they have long been associated with clutter-breaking and riveting content.”
The series will go before cameras in the first quarter of 2022.
