Just months after director Damien Chazelle unleashed his chaotic vision of Old Hollywood in the epic film Babylon, Indian director Vikramaditya Motwane is all set to take audiences back to the Golden Era of Bollywood with his upcoming Hindi-language series Jubilee. Slated to release on Prime Video next month, the show got a first trailer on Friday.
Set in newly-independent India in the year 1947, Jubilee has been described as a tale of “passion, ambition and love.” It chronicles of the lives of “a studio boss, his movie-star wife, a trusted aide, a rising star, a nautch girl and a refugee.” The story seems to be set in and around the fictional Roy Talkies studio, where several characters cross paths, often to violent ends. Jubilee doesn’t present a rose-tinted view of the film industry; instead, it seems to have an almost noir-thriller tone, with bits of levity thrown in. The closest comparison could actually be Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips‘ comic book series The Fade Out.
The film industry in Jubilee is shown as a hotbed of vice, where jealousy and ambition collide as a starlet begins an affair with an up-and-coming heartthrob. Her jealous husband hires a goon to investigate, while an obnoxious studio boss throws his weight around as he plays God. The charm of vintage Mumbai — or Bombay, as it was then known — has been recreated with a combination of practical sets and digital environments. Viewers will be transported to the stylish jazz clubs of the era, the art-deco theaters, and the sprawling studio back lots. We also get plenty of looks at Mumbai’s tropical landscape, and get a sense of the socio-economic upheaval that was in the air. Post-independence India was a land of opportunity, where previously oppressed people discovered that they could follow their dreams.
Like Chazelle in Hollywood, Motwane was hailed as one of Bollywood’s brightest new directors after his first couple of movies — the coming-of-age drama Udaan and the period drama Lootera. He rose to greater prominence when he directed and showran India’s first Netflix original series, Sacred Games. Jubilee marks his return to long-form storytelling after the second season of Sacred Games, which landed in 2019. He also directed the scrappy superhero film Bhavesh Joshi Superhero, the survival drama Trapped, and the meta mockumentary AK vs AK.
Jubilee is directed by Motwane, who also serves as co-creator alongside Soumik Sen. The show also stars Prosenjit Chatterjee, Aditi Rao Hydari, Aparshakti Khurana, Wamiqa Gabbi, Sidhant Gupta, Nandish Sandhu, and Ram Kapoor. The first five episodes will debut on Prime Video on April 7. You can watch the trailer here, and stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
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