Ali Fazal on Guddu Pandit Return, Raakh, Production Slate
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- Ali Fazal returns as Guddu Pandit in 'Mirzapur: The Movie,' a theatrical continuation of the Prime Video crime drama that he likens to 'Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man' and describes as 'the first time India's doing something like this.'
- The Mirzapur film deliberately rewinds Guddu's arc rather than continuing from the series finale, forcing Fazal to perform what he calls 'a bit of a memory washout' to strip away seasons of accumulated character hardening.
- Fazal also stars as Sub-Inspector Jayprakash in 'Raakh,' a Prime Video investigative thriller drawn from one of India's most notorious real-life cases, which he took on after the Mirzapur film got pushed.
- Through Pushing Buttons Studios, his production banner run with wife Richa Chadha, Fazal's debut production 'Girls Will Be Girls' won the Sundance Film Festival audience award plus a jury prize for its lead actor.
- Upcoming slate includes a cameo in the Aamir Khan-produced partition drama 'Batwara' (starring Sunny Deol and Preity Zinta), a segment in Netflix's 'Lust Stories,' and an English-language corporate drama he describes as 'Glengarry Glen Ross meets Severance' filming in London early next year.
- Fazal argues that personal-connection-driven access in the Indian industry doesn't translate abroad and that Indian production contracts need modernizing to match international collaboration standards.
Why it matters: The theatrical 'Mirzapur' film is an explicit experiment in bringing a streaming-native franchise to Indian cinemas — a model Fazal himself flags as unprecedented domestically and unproven at the box office. His parallel work through Pushing Buttons Studios, including the Sundance-winning 'Girls Will Be Girls,' positions him as both star and structural investor in a fragmented industry where independent films lack theatrical distribution and festival-submission know-how.
