Mumbai, Feb 10: The cast and crew of the upcoming webseries, ‘The Night Manager’, had to leave their shoot mid-way in Sri Lanka and recreate the country in Mumbai as they were facing difficulties to film after the pandemic.
The crew was shooting for their Sri Lankan sequence in December 2021, immediately after the pandemic. The whole crew got tested negative and they travelled together. The crew was super excited to shoot for the sequence, but there were problems like filling fuel was taking time, food wasn’t getting delivered on time and there was water shortage among many others.
So, the crew had to leave and recreate Lanka in Mumbai. They shot for only 23 days in Sri Lanka from February 1 to 23 when the original schedule was to shoot the entire February month there.
Talking about the difficult times, creator and director Sandeep Modi, said, “The whole team was excited to shoot one of everyone’s favourite sequences in Sri Lanka, but when the problem arrived, we had to take hard calls.”
Modi added: “We stopped filming for a day to ensure we could go get the food and refilled our stock. We called for food through a flight from India.”
“I was even more stressed about the health of my whole team and especially my wife who was pregnant at that time. It was really difficult to manage everything but I am happy that somehow we managed to escape from the things that could have gone otherwise.”
‘The Night Manager’, produced by The Ink Factory and Banijay Asia, is created and directed by Sandeep Modi and second director Priyanka Ghosh. The series will premiere on Disney+ Hotstar on February 17.
