The end of one journey marks the beginning of another! As the third season of his popular series, Aashram, starts premiering on MX Player, the filmmaker Prakash Jha has moved on to his next project. However, contrary to expectations, Jha is not starting Applause Entertainment and aha Studios’ Half Lion, a recently announced multilingual web series on the life of former Indian prime minister, PV Narasimha Rao. The National Award-winning director is instead working on a political drama series for Jio Studios and will get back to Half Lion only next year. 

The new project in question has been titled Lal Batti and will star Nana Patekar in the lead role. Industry sources have revealed that the show is about the youth’s obsession for power and will see Patekar playing the role of a powerful politician influencing and misleading the youth for his corrupt purposes. "Prakash Jha has a proven track record of tackling socio-political themes in his films, such as Damul, Mrityudand, Gangajal, Apaharan, Rajneeti, Aarakshan, and Satyagraha, among others. His first web series, Aashram, brings to light how the self-proclaimed gurus the masses blindly follow, exploit women, indulge in the drug trade, and control politics. With Lal Batti, which in the car symbolises power, the director is delving deep into the dark side of politics again, narrating the reality around us like never attempted before in any Hindi political drama series so far," a source told us, adding that this big-scale, multi-season show will have an ensemble cast on board and will go into production in September 2022 in UP. 

Recommended Read: There are shows where rape, sex and murder happen every 3rd minute without reason, in Aashram it is a requirement: Bobby Deol and Prakash Jha

Lal Batti marks Nana Patekar’s foray into the OTT space. The veteran actor is finally testing the web waters after an unsuccessful attempt with Firoz Nadiadwala’s 20-episode web series where he was supposed to play RAW’s founder, the legendary spymaster RN Kao. The hurriedly announced project hasn’t seen any development since 2020 and is believed to have been permanently shelved. The Prakash Jha series also marks Patekar’s third collaboration with the filmmaker after Apaharan (2005) and Raajneeti (2010). It’s his second project he's signed since his 2018 #MeToo scandal. The Ab Tak Chhappan actor returns to screens after four years with Ananth Narayan Mahadevan’s social-thriller, The Confession.