Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s directorial web series, Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar, is getting a second season, American magazine Variety has reported.
The popular series has been making waves since its Netflix debut on May 1, 2024.
Within the first week of its launch, the series danced its way up Netflix’s worldwide non-English TV chart in 43 countries, becoming the most-viewed Indian series for the streamer globally.
Set between 1920 and 1947, at the time of Partition, Season 1 of the story is set in the Heeramandi district of Lahore, British India, the milieu of the courtesans (colloquially known as tawaifs). Tawaifs were trained in music and dance and courted by nobility. At the show’s center are Mallikajaan (Manisha Koirala), the scheming queen of Heeramandi, and her vindictive niece Fareedan (Sonakshi Sinha), who has ambitions to take her aunt’s place.
Richa Chadha, Sanjeeda Shaikh, Aditi Rao Hydari, Fardeen Khan, Shekhar Suman, and Taha Shah Badussha also feature in the show.
“In Heeramandi 2, the women now come from Lahore to the film world. They leave Lahore after the partition and most of them settle in the Mumbai film industry or Kolkata film industry. So that journey in the bazaar remains the same. They still have to dance and sing, but this time for the producers and not for the nawabs. So that’s the second season we are planning, let’s see where it goes,” Bhansali told Variety.
Monika Shergill, vice-president of content at Netflix India, added, “Sanjay Leela Bhansali has intricately woven magic to bring Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar to life. Watching audiences everywhere fall in love with this series — making it truly their own as a cultural phenomenon — has been hugely energizing and it thrills me to share that we will be back with Season 2.”