Pictured: Hansal Mehta, Pratik Gandhi and Shefali Shah
Netflix India has formally greenlit Hansal Mehta’s Scoop for a second season. What’s on Netflix has exclusively learned that the streaming giant has tapped two of Hindi cinema’s most accomplished performers, Pratik Gandhi (Saare Jahan Se Accha) and Shefali Shah (Delhi Crime), to headline the next season.
Netflix is giving Scoop a franchise treatment, with its second installment exploring an entirely new narrative, a fresh ensemble, and a new set of characters, while retaining the series’ central focus on the media and its complex relationship with crime, power, and accountability. Season 2 will tackle an urgent ragging issue through a hard-hitting, investigative plot, though specific details are still being kept hazy. Gandhi and Shah will play the two central characters the story largely revolves around, with an ensemble of renowned actors expected to join the cast in pivotal roles. Shooting is scheduled to commence around January or February 2027.
The latest season has been written by Niren Bhatt (Asur, Punjab 95), Ankur Pathak (Family Business), and Preiti Mamgain (Nazdeekiyan). Hansal Mehta will return to direct, with Sanjay Routray, Sarita Patil, and Dikssha Jyote Routray producing under their Matchbox Shots banner, which recently delivered a massive success on Netflix with the military drama series, Operation Safed Sagar. Scoop 2 further strengthens the ongoing association between the two companies, with more projects in discussion.
Scoop, which premiered in June 2023, was based on Jigna Vora’s memoir, Behind Bars in Byculla: My Days in Prison. Inspired by true events, the show followed a crime journalist caught between the powerful nexus of the police, the underworld, and the media when she is charged with the murder of a fellow journalist. Karishma Tanna played the lead role alongside a powerful ensemble cast, including Mohammed Zeeshan Ayyub, Harman Baweja, and Prosenjit Chatterjee. Unlike the original, the second installment is understood to be neither based on a book nor drawn from a true story. Instead, the new story is a fully fictional narrative exploring a different facet of the media landscape.
Picture Credit: Netflix
Scoop was always intended to be a multi-season show, with each installment focusing on a different crime story set within the media ecosystem. However, what’s interesting here is that it’s the first time Netflix India has developed a show as a broader franchise where each season functions essentially as a standalone show and features a new story and largely different cast. The streamer is positioning it as an anthology-style property in which successive seasons are standalone projects no way connected to previous stories. The sophomore seasons of most Netflix India Originals have been the continuation of the existing narratives, with Delhi Crime remaining the only exception, as it investigates a different crime each season while retaining Shefali Shah and the principal cast across seasons. Netflix India is apparently probing a similar model with YRF’s upcoming show, The Tunnel Men, which is unofficially being referred to as the follow-up to The Railway Men, a 2023 mini-series set against the backdrop of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy.
Scoop season 2 continues Hansal Mehta and Netflix’s creative partnership, which began with Scoop in 2023 and has since expanded with Family Business, a high-stakes corporate drama series starring Anil Kapoor and Vijay Varma, currently in post-production and eyeing a late 2026 premiere. It also marks Mehta’s reunion with Pratik Gandhi, who broke through in mainstream Bollywood cinema with his 2020 financial thriller series Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story. Gandhi also headlines Mehta’s highly anticipated biographical drama series based on the life of Mahatma Gandhi, which is currently in advanced discussions with Jio Hotstar for an early 2027 premiere.
For Gandhi, Scoop 2 will mark his third collaboration with Netflix following last year’s Saare Jahan Se Accha and the upcoming Hum Hindustani, which revisits India’s first general election conducted between 1951 and 1952. As for Shefali Shah, she has lately become a regular collaborator at Netflix, with her recent credits including Darlings, Ajeeb Daastaans, and the most popular Emmy Award-winning Delhi Crime, where she played DCP, and later DIG, Vartika Chaturvedi. She also stars in Four More Shots Please! director Nupur Asthana’s upcoming Netflix series, Koke.
Meanwhile, Hansal Mehta has a slew of streaming projects lined up ahead across OTT platforms. His upcoming slate includes Gandhi (Jio Hotstar), Family Business (Netflix), Scam 2010: The Subrata Roy Saga (SonyLIV), Billionaire (Amazon MX Player), and Barabanki (Prime Video). The latter stars Sunny Kaushal, Bipasha Basu, and Vishal Jethwa and went on floors just this week. Mehta is expected to head to Scoop 2 only after finishing the latter.