The Indian ‘Crown’: Applause Entertainment Adapting Gandhi Biographies From Historian Ramachandra Guha Into Multi-Season Drama Series; Pratik Gandhi Cast As Famous Namesake

deadline.com:

EXCLUSIVE: Mahatma Gandhi’s life is to be detailed in a multi-season streaming period drama series akin to Netflix global smash The Crown, Deadline can reveal.Sameer Nair’s local production powerhouse Applause Entertainment has acquired rights to Indian historian and journalist Ramachandra Guha’s Gandhi Before India and Gandhi – The Years that Changed the World — a pair of biographies that are among the most complete ever written about the iconic man.The series will move from from Gandhi’s earliest days to his actions as a lawyer in South Africa to the independence struggle in India, telling the lesser known stories of his life that played an important role in shaping him into a Mahatma (a revered person in South East Asia).

It will also tell the stories of all his compatriots and contemporaries of the freedom movement, who played integral parts in shaping what became free and modern India.Casting is well underway and Applause has named Pratik Gandhi — the surname is coincidental — as Gandhi, who rose from a campaigning lawyer to lead India to independence from the British Empire before his tragic assassination in 1947.“Pratik is a wonderful actor, who has been on the Gujarati stage for the past 20 years but was a breakout in one of our series as a disgraced stock broker [Scam 1992],” said Nair. “He’s recently been doing a monologue; a one-man play in three languages about the younger years of Gandhi, so he’s already steeped in the material and has read Ram’s books.

We’ll be building our universe around him.”Nair — the former Star, NDTV and Bali Telefilms CEO  whose company Applause is behind the Indian remake of The Office and several other high profile Indian series and films — has put a writer’s room in place to