Anurag Kashyap had two heart attacks, went to rehab thrice after Netflix’s ‘miscarriage’ of Maximum City: ‘They were silent for 1.5 years’ | Bollywood News
4 min readMumbaiFeb 18, 2026 12:39 PM IST
Anurag Kashyap’s next release, Kennedy, starring Rahul Roy and Sunny Leone, is finally coming out this Friday on ZEE5. The film has been doing the rounds for two years now, and was written by Kashyap overnight back in 2023. That happened after two to three years of personal and professional setbacks, starting with the shelving of his ambitious adaptation of Suketu Mehta’s 2004 book Maximum City by Netflix India.
“I was only grieving over Maximum City. I was frustrated over Maximum City because the investment in that was so much. Because I’d been attached with Maximum City since 2009, when Danny Boyle was producing it. Slumdog Millionaire writer was writing it, and he wanted me to direct it at that time,” revealed Kashyap in a new interview.
After the global crossover success of the Oscar-winning 2009 British film Slumdog Millionaire set in India, director Danny Boyle decided to adapt another Indian book, Maximum City, with screenwriter Simon Beaufoy, but it didn’t work out. Kashyap told The Hollywood Reporter India he even turned down Showtime’s offer to adapt Vikram Chandra’s 2006 novel Sacred Games into a show produced by legendary filmmaker Ridley Scott and Warner Bros’ offer to adapt Gregory David Roberts’ 2003 book Shantaram with Forrest Gump-fame Eric Roth attached as the screenwriter.
“It got India all wrong. Anything based in India, I won’t do it in English. So, I’ve been walking the same path. When Suketu said do Maximum City in Hindi, I was very happy. It was greenlit by Netflix before I even wrote it. I asked them to read the book, but none of them did except one person. I said, ‘Know what you’re greenlighting,’” recalled Kashyap. By then, he’d already adapted Sacred Games for the platform, which turned out to be their maiden India Original, back in 2017.
Kashyap then argued that since the problem was in the first 15 pages of his script, Netflix could’ve flagged it right there and then, but they didn’t stop him from writing 900 pages. “Their silence for one-and-a-half years was even more triggering.” Netflix India cancelled a number of shows and films , including Dibakar Banerjee’s Tees, after ‘policy changes’ post the Tandav-Prime Video India controversy in 2021.
And then to compensate, they were sending me mediocre scripts. When I said it’s mediocre and I need time, they said, ‘No, but we have the actors’ dates in four months.’ I said no, I can’t do it. If you want me to do it, I’ll do it but I need time,” said Kashyap.
He revealed Netflix loved the pilot of a show he wrote, but wanted him to turn it into the Indian version of breakout Spanish thriller show Money Heist. Kashyap backed out, left Netflix India, and grieved for months. “It was like a miscarriage. Because of that grieving, I had heart attacks, was on blood thinners, and then the vaccine reacted. I got asthma, I was on steroids. With blood thinners and steroids, my mind was so abuzz as if it was on drugs,” recalled the filmmaker.
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“I went into rehab three times, had a heart attack, my health went down, I didn’t know how to deal with it. Then slowly, I crawled back. I’m myself now. But I still went on making films,” Kashyap told SCREEN in 2022. “Unlike other people, I don’t have the luxury to sit and wait. I don’t do massive budget films which can sustain my people, my team,” he added.
Depression and asthma weren’t the only health scares as Kashyap also began drinking a lot and ordering in a lot of unhealthy food, which led to him gaining 35 kg within just eight months. “My daughter was very worried. She sent me to rehab. I went to the rehab to fix myself, and I fixed myself. But I got a tear in my right leg in the rehab while playing cricket. And because of being on blood thinners, I couldn’t go for surgery. I couldn’t walk and was on a wheelchair. I was on bed rest for months,” recalled Kashyap.
