Filmmaker Hansal Mehta will direct the web series The Scam, based on Sucheta Dalal and Debashish Basu’s book The Scam: Who Won? Who Lost? Who Got Away?
The Scam, produced by Applause Entertainment, will retrace the 1992 Bombay Stock Exchange securities fraud engineered by stockbroker Harshad Mehta. The flamboyant trader was accused of rigging the market and siphoning off money and convicted of some of his crimes. He died in 2001.
Hansal Mehta, known for such films as Shahid and Aligarh (2015), said he had been toying with the idea of making a film on the book. “The film never got made!” he said in a statement released by Applause Entertainment on Monday. “I believe every story has its destiny. With our newspapers screaming scam every single day, I think the time for telling these stories was just right.”
Mehta made his debut in the digital space as the creative producer of Bose: Dead/Alive (2017). For The Scam, casting director Mukesh Chabbra has been roped in to find actors, especially for the lead role of Harshad Mehta.
Meanwhile, Hansal Mehta’s Omerta, based on the life of British-Pakistani terrorist Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, will be released on April 20.