The Curious Case of 'Chakda ’Xpress': Anushka Sharma’s Long-Awaited Comeback Film in Limbo

Chakda ’Xpress exists — but cannot be seen. The biopic of Jhulan Goswami, former cricketer and one of the fastest bowlers of all time, starring Anushka Sharma was part of Netflix’s 2023 slate. It was birthed from their collaboration with Clean Slate Filmz — co-founded by Sharma and her brother, Karnesh Ssharma.

This collaboration gave Netflix off-kilter, author-backed portraits, like Bulbbul (2020), Qala (2022), Mai (2022), and Kohrra (2023). Prosit Roy, who directed Pari (2018) for Clean Slate Filmz, helmed Chakda ’Xpress. Sharma whose last film was the critically panned, commercially withered Zero (2018) would be seen on screen after a long gap — the word “comeback” was whispered. There was considerable buzz around the film, notwithstanding the glut of sports biopics that the film was being slotted alongside.

Chakda ’Xpress was supposed to drop on Netflix in October 2023. “Just before the world cup,” the film’s editor Manas Mittal tells The Hollywood Reporter India. But by mid-September when Mittal had not heard back from the team, with no promotional strategy in place, “it was clear that it was not coming out. Since then, it has been total silence.”

The film’s journey has been rocky from the start. “When Jhulan’s rights came to Clean Slate, Karnesh suggested Prosit and I develop it into a script,” Abhishek Banerjee, the film’s writer, tells The Hollywood Reporter India. “Incidentally, I came from Jhulan’s neighbouring village in West Bengal, so I knew her name, but like the rest of the country, I had no idea of women’s cricket.”

Banerjee and Roy knew they did not want to make a templated biopic. They met Goswami through 2018–19 and sharpened the script, bringing into it Goswami’s wit and humour.

The film’s first schedule was pencilled in for April 2020. In March, there was a global lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. A string of events followed, and the film’s destiny rested on cracked ground — Anushka Sharma announced her pregnancy, a producer pulled out, and Roy got busy with Paatal Lok. Karnesh, though, bought back the rights of the film and started pitching it again.

Then, in 2022, Netflix came on board, and what was supposed to be a theatrical film was restructured for OTT. “Instead of the four-act structure with an interval, it was now a three-act structure that was cut short,” Banerjee notes. “There were no changes that Netflix demanded, nothing in terms of writing.” Speaking to multiple people close to the project, there was a sense of deep camaraderie, working towards a shared vision. After the birth of her child, Anushka Sharma spent over seven months training.

Cinematographer Pratik Shah was lassoed in. “I was excited because this was a different way of showing cricket. Usually it is shot from a broadcast perspective, from the boundaries, but we found that lifeless, only harking back to some nostalgia. Instead, we thought it should not just be a celebratory biopic, but something more personal,” Shah tells THR India. The film was shot mostly with a hand-held camera, giving the sport a sense of physical presence and psychological immediacy.

There was also a breaking of the fourth wall, where Jhulan is constantly commenting on her own biopic. “It has a very sarcastic, dark-comedic tone, where she knows her situation and the situation of women’s cricket. The idea was to have a fun, pacy, self-aware film,” Banerjee notes.

Netflix put out a teaser that was immediately pulled up for its awkward staging and flat acting. This was not from the film, but a look test that had been shot before the pandemic, for an agency.

The film, instead, stands apart — this is something uniformly reiterated by those close to the film. “The scary part is that this teaser is the publicly available material from Chakda ’Xpress — our film, though, has nothing to do with that,” Banerjee notes. Mittal, too, insists that the film stood at odds with what it was being perceived as, “Post Chak De! India I don’t know what we have really done with the ‘sports film’. Maybe Mukkabaaz (2017)? I don’t get to see really solid narratives around sports in Hindi cinema.”

Mittal’s initial excitement for this project stemmed from standing at a slant to the genre — a film that was structured without the usual training montage-slump-comeback arc; “Jhulan had such a prolific career, playing several world cups. The film had to capture her life in international cricket, which meant you could not limit yourself to shooting in Indian stadiums.”

At first, the team did a recce in Dharamshala, hoping they could pass off that light for London. But given the extensive, expensive VFX work it would entail, further expanding costs, Clean Slate Filmz cobbled together the resources for a short schedule in the United Kingdom, shooting in stadiums across the country — at grounds in Headingley, Durham and Scarborough. Mittal, too, was part of this schedule, “I was cutting the film while it was being shot, in the stadium.” Between Mumbai, London and Kolkata, the film’s shoot was completed in 62 days.

The film’s edit and grade, too, were almost complete. “There were only a few VFX shots that were left to be approved. I thought I would come back to do it in a few days. That never happened,” Shah tells THR India.

Clean Slate Filmz and Netflix parted ways, terminating their four-year partnership. The exact reason for this departure is not clear — “creative disagreement” and “budgetary issues” are cited. Both Netflix and Clean Slate Filmz did not respond to these questions. Along with Chakda ’Xpress, the Vijay Varma and Triptii Dimri film Afghaani Snow is also in limbo. Clean Slate Filmz needs to buy out the two movies in order to negotiate new contracts for their future release. But there seems to be no interest in that, and given Anushka Sharma’s break from acting, neither is there an impetus to keep the conversation going and push the film out.

Even those close to the film have few answers and hope for the film’s release has whittled down significantly. This is not a new destiny for films, often hurled into oblivion because of any number of reasons, from petty producers to terrible storytelling.

“My biggest victory, though, is that we had the privilege of showing the film to Jhulan di last year. She was moved to tears. I told her, ‘I hope we have done justice to the sport you have played, at least — if not you.’ She said she was proud of how we have shown cricket. That was my biggest takeaway,” Mittal notes. Chakda ’Xpress ends not with glorious victory, but with a message about systemic problems in women’s cricket. A source close to the film tells THR India, “It is a film where in the end, it is not about India winning, but about the victory of what these women are fighting for: equal respect, not even equal pay, just equal respect.”

To read more exclusive stories from The Hollywood Reporter India's April 2025 print issue, pick up a copy of the magazine from your nearest book store or newspaper stand.

To buy the digital issue of the magazine, please click here.