Ram Gopal Varma announces web series on Mumbai underworld

He is the man responsible for popularising underworld stories in Bollywood with cult hit "Satya" and now Ram Gopal Varma is all set to explore the subject in a web series.

The director has teamed up with producer Madhu Mantena for "D Company". It will explore the life of Dawood Ibrahim and his "D Company from its initiation to its growth as the most dreaded organisation in the entire criminal history of India".

"My research on the subject matter of 'D Company' came from my extensive interactions over the last 20 years with gangsters to encounter cops to middlemen of the underworld and also many film people who were involved with the underworld," the filmmaker said in a statement.

"The series will showcase the rise of Dawood from being just a small time hoodlum to how he overthrew the Pathan gang and then after shifting to Dubai. How he gave it a glamorous and corporate look by mixing up with the high and mighty including film stars," he added.

The series will also include the metamorphosis of the D Company from being just an underworld mafia company to how it became a terror company.

"Ramu has been collecting data on the underworld not from now but from mid 90s onwards, even before he made 'Satya' and 'Company' and I honestly believe that no one has his kind of grip on this particular subject matter. The script has been locked and shooting will start very soon," Mantena said.

The producer also said that the 10-episode series will run for "at least 5 seasons".

No casting details of the series have been shared by the filmmaker as yet.

Varma, who pioneered a new movement in Bollywood with his experimental films on crime, politics and horror in the '90s and early 2000, has not been successful at the box office in recent years but he is still regarded as a maverick filmmaker.