A quarter-century after it premiered in Cannes, Bandit Queen will be back as a web series. The announcement of a web series on the life of Phoolan Devi was made at the ongoing 72nd Cannes film festival on Saturday by Bobby Bedi, who produced the 1994 film ‘Bandit Queen’.
The series will begin from where the film ended, with the surrender of Phoolan Devi to the police. “We wanted to do a sequel, but the internet offers the opportunity to tell the rest of her life story,” Bedi said while making the announcement at the Indian pavilion in the Cannes film market.
”For a while we were exploring the possibility of telling the rest of the story, after the surrender in 1983,” said Bedi, who was in Cannes in 1994 to present Bandit Queen in the Directors’ Fortnight parallel programme.
Tannishtha Chatterjee, who has acted in international productions such as Lion (2016) and Bricklane (2007), will play Phoolan Devi in the series, the role played by Seema Biswas in the film.
Biswas won the Best Actress National Award for the role. The movie also won the National Award for the Best Hindi Film.
Chatterjee said the longer online format would help “unfold the life of Phoolan Devi.”
The production will start later this year. The series will be directed by Tigmanshu Dhulia, who directed the 2012 biopic ‘Paan Singh Tomar’, on the life of the Indian army soldier and athlete, who became a bandit. (UNI)
