Ram Gopal Varma on GUNS and THIGHS' story

- his most ambitious project -

My only objective of foraying into the digital world is to be able to tell stories which I otherwise would have never been allowed to tell on the film screen.

My first production for this platform will be the 10-episode Season One (4 seasons total) of a Series titled GUNS and THIGHS.

The title is derived as a synonym of how Power and Sex affect the internal politics of the crime world.

I was fortunate to find in Germany based Boris Groenemeyer (Stormcell Entertainment) a passionate producer, who exactly understood the intention behind this project.

After reading the subject matter, he found a mutual common ground in both of us having an immense respect for larger than life emotions, and he was eager to showcase the highly dramatic stories of Mumbai Mafia as told by me to an international audience. This forged a great and fruitful partnership between both of us.

The story of the entire series of GUNS and THIGHS is something I have gathered over the years in my various interactions with ex-gangsters, encounter cops, middlemen of the underworld, their victims' relatives and so on.

Some in the know might feel that I have dealt with this subject matter in my earlier films like SATYA and COMPANY, but nothing could be further from the truth. That's because in those films, I barely scratched the surface of the truth of the Mafia's underbelly due to my inconclusive knowledge and also due to various other restrictions, but here in this series I decided to tell it all the way it is.

This Series is as much intended for the international audience as it is for the youth in India, who were either not born then or were too young to register the turbulent times the city of Mumbai went through during that time period and I strongly believe this Series will document that era for those who did not witness it first hand.

Mumbai, one of the world's ten most populated cities, with nearly 20 million people, is also the financial capital of India; but ironically it's the heartbreaking visuals of poverty that showcases most of the city.

Dharavi, the world's largest slum, thousands of pavement dwellers, pot hole ridden roads, buildings which look like they will collapse any minute are merely the tip of the iceberg of MUMBAI's overall poverty.

The only slivers of light, escaping this darkness of MUMBAI at that time were the once in a while occasional glow of the hidden riches of a few wealthy business companies, the extremely false glitter of the Bollywood film companies and the violently ruled Mafia companies. It is no wonder that such a wild concoction would inevitably give rise to a volatile and very potent crime culture. In such a turbulent atmosphere where a few incredibly rich, and millions of downright poor live right next to each other, fuelled by the misleading fantasies of a glamourous film world, crime is bound to prosper and as expected criminal gangs flourished in MUMBAI for decades, till they were reasonably reigned in by the mid-2000's.

The most powerful of all the gangs to rule MUMBAI was the D COMPANY, named after its leader Dawood Ibrahim who, along with his partner Chhota Rajan, held the city in a stranglehold for a very long time.

But then a chain of events led to a dangerous split between Dawood and Rajan, which broke up the D COMPANY and to seize this opportunity a lot of other gangs jumped into the fray to stake their own claim for the top spot.

This created a massive outburst of criminal activities including extortion and contract killings, and the resulting gang wars created a demand for hitmen, which in turn generated a very lucrative business for the ever hungry recruiters of the Mumbai Mafia and they got busy sourcing potential killers from the badlands of interior India.

This was also the time period which saw the heights of a never before bed hopping nexus between the Mafia, the Film people, the Cops and the Businessmen/Politicians.

It is these times that GUNS and THIGHS as a series is intending to capture through the relationship/conflict detailing of its various dynamically larger than life and yet extremely human characters.

It's my strong belief that GUNS and THIGHS will rip open the real truth of the Mumbai Mafia.

Ram Gopal Varma

Producer of Ram Gopal Varma's GUNS and THIGHS

Produced by
STORMCELL ENTERTAINMENT

Being from Germany, the only things you hear about Indian movies are Bollywood musicals and Slumdog Millionaire.

But as a real film fan in the process of discovering more, I came across RGV’s work. It grabs you; it is visceral.

I’m working a lot in China right now, emerging myself in other cultures and in other forms of storytelling, which go beyond the traditional Western way. At some point, you realize that the core of those stories around the world is the same – everyone just expresses them differently.

As the audience shifts their attention from the conventional theater screen towards other formats, especially with Series being consumed at home, the time has come for an extremely hard hitting story like GUNS and THIGHS. Too vast in scale and epic in nature to be told in a feature film, and maybe too close to the truth, RGV is setting the bar for Indian storytelling higher than ever and doesn’t shy from exposing the truth in all its glory.

Stories used to be told by our ancestors, around the campfire, not only to give wisdom to each other, but also to give warnings. A series like GUNS and THIGHS puts the finger into that wound and gives you a new perspective on whatever you took for granted in a very attentive, but also entertaining way.

India has always been on my list of countries where one can find extraordinary stories. My purpose is telling stories which are in search of Truth - delivering stories that change people’s perception of value and life – and I believe GUNS and THIGHS has the gravity for it.

Thankfully I now have the chance to work with one of India’s foremost minds in creating that legacy. If someone in India can take the next step in the evolution of Indian storytelling, then it is RGV. He knows how to do it, and now he and Stormcell Entertainment are partnering to bring the quality, which will enable access to Indian stories for an international audience.