{"id":18837,"date":"2026-07-27T13:28:49","date_gmt":"2026-07-27T08:28:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=18837"},"modified":"2026-07-27T13:28:49","modified_gmt":"2026-07-27T08:28:49","slug":"netflix-india-releases-breakout-lock-upp-ratings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=18837","title":{"rendered":"Netflix India Releases Breakout &#8216;Lock Upp&#8217; Ratings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\t<strong>EXCLUSIVE:<\/strong> Is <a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/tag\/netflix\/\" id=\"auto-tag_netflix\" data-tag=\"netflix\">Netflix<\/a> eyeing an Indian version of <em>Love is Blind<\/em> or <em>Too Hot to Handle<\/em>? <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tIn an exclusive interview with Deadline, <a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/tag\/netflix-india\/\" id=\"auto-tag_netflix-india\" data-tag=\"netflix-india\">Netflix India<\/a> VP of Content <a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/tag\/monika-shergill\/\" id=\"auto-tag_monika-shergill\" data-tag=\"monika-shergill\">Monika Shergill<\/a> revealed her service was working on developing Netflix-owned unscripted formats locally, without revealing their identities.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\t\u201cWe are working on a couple of very interesting, big global formats, which are Netflix formats, and they will be coming to India,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tWhile Netflix does not own either <em>Too Hot to Handle<\/em> and <em>Love is Blind<\/em>, it the has exclusive international production deals in place for both and has created numerous versions. The underlying format rights remain with <em>Too Hot to Handle<\/em> program maker Fremantle and The North Road Company-owned Kinetic Content, the maker of <em>Love is Blind<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tPushed on the identity of the shows, Shergill said: \u201cI am not at liberty to share right now, but something exciting will be announced very soon.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tThe news came as Shergill was outlining the breakout success of another format for which Netflix is rights owner \u2013 the <a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/tag\/balaji-telefilms\/\" id=\"auto-tag_balaji-telefilms\" data-tag=\"balaji-telefilms\">Balaji Telefilms<\/a>-produced \u201ccaptive reality\u201d show <em><a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/tag\/lock-upp\/\" id=\"auto-tag_lock-upp\" data-tag=\"lock-upp\">Lock Upp<\/a><\/em>. The show, which debuted on June 27 and will continue playing until August 5, follows celebrity contestants, known as inmates, who live in a jail-themed setting and compete in tasks while facing eliminations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tShergill and <em>Lock Upp<\/em> creator <a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/tag\/ekta-kapoor\/\" id=\"auto-tag_ekta-kapoor\" data-tag=\"ekta-kapoor\">Ekta Kapoor<\/a> said the show has become \u201cthe most defining entertainment conversation,\u201d with the Netflix chief revealing it has amassed 50 million hours viewed since launch last month (\u201cthe equivalent of 5,700 years,\u201d according to Shergill) and accrued 2.5 billion social media interactions within three weeks of launch. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tThe spent two weeks in the Global Top (Non-English) Series list, as Indian unscripted series grow in global popularity. It began with five episodes in the first week, but the \u201con-audience demand and overwhelming success\u201d has seen this upped to six. \u201cUp to the finale, we\u2019ll just be going nonstop,\u201d she added. Netflix\u2019s most recent What We Watched data dump revealed the show is the second-most watched series by hours.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tKapoor, a veteran film and TV producer in India, outlined her theory behind the show\u2019s popularity. \u201cIt\u2019s the fact that celebrities are coming in with tags and judgment, and they\u2019re able to discuss that why they are like that, or what has made them like that, so their secrets become their lifelines,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s one way they touch base with their own humanity, their own understanding, their own traumas.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tThe series actually began life in 2022 on ALTBalaji, the now defunct streamer that Balaji Telefilms operated, and MX Player, which was recently subsumed into Prime Video India. Netflix revitalized it with Bollywood stars Farah Khan and Riteish Deshmukh hosting, and a contestant cast including actors Dheeraj Dhoopar, Shivangi Joshi, Harshad Chopda and Shilpa Shinde.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tKapoor was quick to credit Shergill and Netflix for supporting her vision to revive the show, revealing she rejected two other offers to move ahead with the Los Gatos-based streamer.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\t\u201cWhen you work with a platform, you want to work with a platform that takes your concept or your idea bigger than you thought, and supports your vision,\u201d she said. \u201cFor a creator, there is nothing bigger than support \u2013 and it doesn\u2019t have to be only financial. It is also because sense of ownership is mutual, and respect is mutual. If make a show for Netflix, I know that Netflix won\u2019t abandon me midway, because it\u2019s not doing well. They will run with me until the last mile.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tPressed by Deadline, Shergill and Kapoor declined to confirm a second season of <em>Lock Upp<\/em> on Netflix or if the show will be adapted outside of India. However, Shergill did say: \u201cThe format is getting a lot of interest internally. I cannot confirm either of those questions, but since it\u2019s doing so well, I think it has a long life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\t<strong>Comedy focus<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tBesides adapting global formats, Shergill\u2019s other focus at Netflix India is in comedy and growing local talent. One example is stand-up Samay Raina, who first appeared on the streamer on long-running talk series <em><a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/tag\/the-great-indian-kapil-show\/\" id=\"auto-tag_the-great-indian-kapil-show\" data-tag=\"the-great-indian-kapil-show\">The Great Indian Kapil Show<\/a><\/em>. His chemistry with host and fellow comedian Kapil Sharma was such that Shergill, who had already ordered a stand-up special from him, began a conversation about bringing his YouTube show, <em>India\u2019s Got Latent<\/em>, to Netflix.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tA co-exclusive deal for Season 2 was struck, which Shergill calls a \u201cgreat experiment\u201d and potentially the precusor to similar agreements with both platforms, Raina and his audience all responding positively.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\t\u201cThe thinking was very simple, actually,\u201d she said \u201cWe really want to be the best home for comedy and the best comedic talent in the country. Samay had come for <em>The Great Indian Kapil Show<\/em>, and their partnership and that episode worked so well that when we were talking about his stand-up special, and it came up that <em>Latent<\/em> Season 2 was coming out, it was just intuitive that, uh, the show could exist on Netflix in an ad-free version for his fans.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\t\u201cIt just shows that the best kind of creative actually should sit in experiences and different kinds of experiences. We have a huge audience for it on Netflix India.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\t<em>The Great Indian Kapil Show<\/em>, which followed on from Sharma\u2019s network shows <em>The Kapil Sharma Show<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0<em>Comedy Nights with Kapil<\/em>, is headed for a fifth season and stand-up specials from many of India\u2019s top performers such as Zakir Khan have become top-performing productions. As such, the comedy space \u201cis something that we want to own in India,\u201d said Shergill, and projects are underway wth several big names.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tWhile Shergill feels the momentum is with Netflix right now, the service is competing in one of the toughest streaming markets in the world, where JioHotstar, Sony LIV and Prime Video, now including MX Player, are all key players. Indeed, in March 2024, Mike Hopkins, the Head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, said India was <a href=\"https:\/\/deadline.com\/2024\/03\/mike-hopkins-amazon-prime-video-india-subscriptions-content-slate-1235861039\/\">responsible for new streaming subscribers<\/a> than anywhere else bar the U.S. for his service. <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tHowever, only about a quarter of the 601 million streaming consumers in India pay for services, according to Ormax Media research from September 2025, so Netflix has a fight on its hands, but Shergill and her team are taking a bullish outlook.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve been having great momentum,\u201d said. Shergill. \u201cWe are one of the most loved entertainment, streaming entertainment services in India. Yes, there is fierce competition, but everyone\u2019s offering and value proposition is different.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\t\u201cWhat defines Netflix is the ability to do premium and aspirational content and yet make it the most accessible. If I were to just give you a sense of where we are today, the biggest theatrical movies are on Netflix across languages. The biggest premium dramas are on Netflix. The biggest unscripted entertainment is on Netflix today with <em>Kapil Sharma<\/em>, <em>Lock Upp<\/em>, <em>Fabulous Lives of Desi Wives<\/em> and <em>Desi Bling<\/em>, and the biggest original documentaries consistently are on Netflix. So are most of the awards.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\t\u201cI have great regard for all our competitive services, and we learn a lot from them, but I think the the value and the edge that Netflix brings is our constant experimentation and innovation. No one programs as diversely as we do. No one takes as many bets as we do, whether big, medium or small, and that is what has consistently made our offering the strongest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\t\u201cWe are actually seeing India being one of the biggest growth markets for Netflix all over the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\t<strong>\u2018Operation Safed Sagar\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tWhile much of the recent focus has been on unscripted, the next big bet from Netflix in India is <em>Operation Safed Sagar<\/em>, a high-budget military drama series focused on the Indian Air Force\u2019s 1999 aerial campaign during the Kargil War against Pakistan.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\tShergill calls the show, which is latest in India\u2019s long line of productions on its military prowess, \u201ca very large format VFX extravaganza.\u201d Matchbox Shots and Feel Good Films are making the show in direct collaboration with the Indian Air Force.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto     \">\n\t\u201cThe <em>Lock Upp<\/em> finale is going to be a very big conversation wave in India given the way the pre-finale weeks are looking, and immediately after that, we have <em>Operation Safed Sagar<\/em>, our biggest show in the tenth year of Netflix in India. There are a whole slew of shows after that, which will be addressing the different audience tastes and moods that we cater to \u2013 really the whole spectrum of audience.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>EXCLUSIVE: Is Netflix eyeing an Indian version of Love is Blind or Too Hot to Handle? In an exclusive interview with Deadline, Netflix India VP of Content Monika Shergill revealed her service was working on developing Netflix-owned unscripted formats locally, without revealing their identities. \u201cWe are working on a couple of very interesting, big global&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18838,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/deadline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Monika-Shergill-and-Lock-Upp.jpg?w=1024","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pics-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}