When Hunkkaar: The Roar released last month on JioHotstar, it arrived with an unusual advantage. Aneet Padda had shot the series before Saiyaara became a blockbuster, so the show debuted after its lead had become a star. Heeraz Marfatia, who developed the show, served as lead writer, co-wrote all six episodes and directed the third and fourth episodes, told Bollywood Hungama that the team was “ecstatic” when Saiyaara broke out. “All the credit goes to her,” he said. The benefit only mattered, he added, because Hunkkaar “lives up to the weight of the expectations” around her.
Marfatia knows such timing rarely lines up. Financed and made by Applause Entertainment, the series found its home at JioHotstar after an incubation process led by creative producer Rahul Vedparkash. For Padda, he said, the rise was earned: “the whole world is her playground.”
One visual grammar across six episodes
Hunkkaar was directed by Marfatia, Karan Darius Kapadia and Nitya Mehra. Multi-director seasons often struggle for consistency, but Marfatia suggested a practical fix: the three directors and both cinematographers, Kavin Jagtiani and Kabir Tejpal, worked through the pilot’s shot breakdown together. Mehra, he said, was generous enough to build that breakdown even though the episode was hers to direct.
“American shows have mastered the consistency of cinematic language,” Marfatia said. The result was a shared grammar that carried across all six episodes.
The writing room’s point of view
Hunkkaar sits in a crowded genre: stories about godmen sexually assaulting devotees, alongside Maharaj, Aashram and Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai. To stand out, Marfatia said, the writing had to avoid familiar templates. The team settled on a sharper point of view: an institution is only as good as the people running it.
The message is hopeful rather than cynical. When the cop, lawyer and journalist simply do their jobs, the system becomes a juggernaut. “You, the people, are the system,” Marfatia said.
He described the writers’ room as “the heart of a show” and compared it to balancing a bicycle while steering it. Marfatia collaborated with writers Ravinder Randhawa and Nikhil Nair. The toughest part was not one scene but the case’s entire trajectory—how prosecution, defence, judge and audience would each see it.
A development-first bet
Marfatia co-founded Writers Cut with Shubhra Swarup, writer and co-producer on Delhi Crime. The company argues that the industry produces too much content and too little story. “We don’t want to be in the content business; we want to be in the story business,” he said.
Better storytelling, he argued, lifts commercial results even when stars, production values and marketing stay the same. Development requires world-building, and world-building requires repeated failure before it works. Writers Cut is now co-producing a show with Channel 4, has a couple of Indian shows in development, and has a feature film on the cards.
- Shot before stardom: Aneet Padda filmed Hunkkaar before Saiyaara released.
- One shared grammar: Directors and cinematographers broke down the pilot together.
- Development-first: Applause Entertainment incubated the show before JioHotstar became its home.
- Next: Writers Cut has a Channel 4 co-production and India projects in the works.
Source: bollywoodHungama.com
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