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Netflix India head Monika Shergill breaks down 2026 slate, reveals how they got Lock Upp on the platform | Exclusive
Netflix India announced its slate for 2026 in the Next on Netflix event on Tuesday. The platform's top executive Monika Shergill talks to HT.
Netflix India announced its slate of titles for the coming year in a grand event in Mumbai on Tuesday. The streaming giant unveiled a big range of films and shows, including returning shows like Maamla Legal Hai and The Great Indian Kapil Show, to new ones such as Operation Safed Sagar, along with new films starring Madhuri Dixit, Saif Ali Khan, and many more A-list stars.
Monika Shergill, Vice President of Content for Netflix India, opened up on the ambitious slate in an exclusive interview with Hindustan Times, unpacking the range and opening up on some surprises.
Monika Shergill on Netflix India's 2026 slate
“I'm very excited about the 2026 slate because it moves ahead of the 2025 slate, everything that we did in 2025 . This year’s slate has so many new additions in terms of the genres, in terms of the kind of formats of storytelling that we are experimenting with, and going into spaces that we haven't hadn't programmed before,” says Monika as she reflects on the slate.
Talking about the specifics, Monika adds, “I can give you a few examples, like from the biggest titles like Taskaree to the absolutely contrasting Kohrra season 2. Nilanjana Puryakastha, the creator of Anupamaa, is adapting a telenovela for us. Then, our biggest tentpole Operation Safed Sagar is on a mission of the Indian Air Force. War dramas are seen as a domain of the theatrical cinema. You will see that on streaming for the first time ever. That really reflects our ambition.”
On Sunny Deol and Akshaye Khanna's reunion in Ikka
One of the titles that jumped out from the slate is courtroom drama Ikka, directed by Siddharth P Malhotra. It brings back Sunny Deol and Akshaye Khanna together after almost three decades. Talking about the casting coup, Monika says, “Ikka was very interesting. We were very keen to do a courtroom drama, and a powerful one, because we've seen courtroom dramas do so well on Netflix. Siddharth P Malhotra had an early draft, and we were very excited about it. We sat down together, and worked on making it its best version. We wanted to cast two dynamic people in it. We’d been having a conversation with Sunny Deol for a long time about an original film. And then we just started discussing who his antagonist would be. After Chhaava, we were all just wanting to cast Akshaye, and that's how it happened. So we thought, what if the two of them are together? Credit to Sid, who did a lot of work to make it happen. I think it's going to be a very unique experience for people.”
On bagging Lock Upp from MX Player
But the biggest surprise of the night was the captive reality show Lock Upp, created by Ektaa Kapoor. The show was originally streamed on Amazon MX Player and hosted by Kangana Ranaut. It now arrives on Netflix in a new avatar. Talking about how that happened, Monika tells us, “Lock Upp is our first captive reality ever, and we are bringing it in a new Netflix avatar, which is going to be a very big differentiator on the service. I think it's a quintessentially Indian format. There are things we are working on, which will bring the freshness to it.”
At the Next on Netflix event on Tuesday, Ekta Kapoor addressed the platform shift on stage, when she said, “The first season was appreciated so much that we knew we had to make it bigger, grander, and spicier. So we needed to bring it to the biggest platform in the world.”
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