Mumbai:
Vikramaditya Motwane says not being a director on "Sacred Games" season two freed him to focus on the "overall plotting" of the show as a showrunner.
Motwane and Anurag Kashyap had split the directing responsibilities on the first season of the show but the second season will see Kashyap and Neeraj Ghaywan as directors. "The stress of being on set and directing wasn't there but other than that it's the same, chasing deadlines and the same workload.
"It made me be more objective of the overall plotting of the show more. Having someone else go for recce and plan was easier. But once the shoot is over, the work is almost the same," Motwane told PTI. In season two, Varun Grover returns as the lead writer and is joined by three new writers, Dhruv Narang, Pooja Varma and Nihit Bhave.
"We started writing season two in January 2018 and started shoot in October. We had about ten months for the writing, which seems like a long time but it's not. It takes you at least four to five months to just plot- we will do this, we will do that.
"Then you get into actual episode writing. If you look at it, season one took more than a year to write," Motwane said. The second season, based on author Vikram Chandra's novel of the same name, will pick up from Sartaj Singh (Khan) pursuing his relentless battle of saving the city and Ganesh Gaitonde (Siddiqui) facing bigger challenges to retain his position as the legendary kingpin of Mumbai in two different timelines.
For Motwane, the biggest challenge was to get everything set before the series starts shooting as the scale this time was bigger. "My only concern was to ensure that the scripts are ready before we start shooting. Not just for directors, actors but also for the production, location, assistant directors.
"It's not a small little show shot in a room, it's a massive show which is now (shot) across three countries. It was a challenge. Keeping a tab on that, knowing what money is spent where, how to channelise that. It was interesting." The show starts steaming from August 15.
