Bollywood in spotlight of ‘Call My Agent’ spinoff

The director behind a biting look at India's entertainment industry says the backroom dealings and bold personalities of Bollywood have proven a rich target for satire.

Shaad Ali's latest venture is a local adaptation of a runaway hit Netflix series that follows four hapless French talent agents as they wrangle and coddle their celebrity clients.

"Call My Agent: Bollywood" trades Paris for Mumbai, the sprawling port city home to India's most lucrative production houses and its most famous megastars.

Ali's is the third makeover for the Emmy award-winning "Dix Pour Cent," a nod to the traditional 10 percent cut taken by agents in the movie business, after earlier incarnations in Britain and Turkey.

"It was very easy for me to be seduced by the show," he tells AFP, crediting a career spent observing the conduct of actors, their entourages and his fellow filmmakers for inspiration.

But getting the show from the script to the screen was tough, with last year's COVID outbreak in Mumbai upending the production schedule.

One French critic branded Ali's version a "disaster," while Indian reviewers have also given hostile verdicts.

But Ali, who before this was best known for romantic dramas starring some of Bollywood's most recognizable male heart-throbs, says he has remained "peacefully unaware" of the bad press.

"I keep hearing from people that there are mixed reactions, some love it, some have hated it, which I prefer," he says.

"I don't like in-between reactions, that's what is scary."

Nor has he shied away from poking fun at the airy and sometimes oblivious personalities often found in any celebrity milieu.

"My intention was never bad, and I am part of [the industry] really, so if I am making...