Scarlett Keeling

When the naked body of Scarlett Keeling, a young British girl, is found washed up in Goa, the police are quick to dismiss it as an accidental drowning. A steadfast lawyer with a daughter of the same age as the deceased girl helps her mother wage an uphill battle against a mighty nexus of drug-dealers, power brokers, and corrupt policemen who will go to any extent to cover up the truth. Matchbox Pictures is working on a mini-series that tells the story of this sordid affair, and unflinchingly probes conventional assumptions about moral complicity and guilt. Having acquired life rights from Scarlett Keeling’s mother Fiona Mackeown, Matchbox is all set to produce an international TV series based on the incident.

Jailbirds

When fellow reporter J Dey was shot dead in 2011, Jigna Vora was like most others working the Mumbai crime beat, shaken. The last thing she expected was to be accused of having ordered the killing. For nine long months, she found herself lodged in Byculla jail, a space she had until then only known from the outside. To bring the story of those months to a wider audience, Matchbox Pictures is working on an official film adaptation of her memoirs, Behind Bars in Byculla: My Days in Prison (2019). The film is set to offer an intimate first-hand glimpse into what life behind bars is like for women prisoners in India.

Flight into Fear

24 December 1999. Just another day in the life of Captain Devi Sharan and the rest of the crew and passengers on-board IC-814, a 2-hour flight from Kathmandu to Delhi. But fate has other plans. In their midst are five armed militants, who will go on to hijack the plane and have it flown to Taliban-controlled Kandahar. Matchbox Pictures is producing a six-episode mini-series for Netflix, centred around the harrowing ordeal of those on-board the ill-fated aircraft, and the turbulent negotiations on-ground as Indian authorities sought to put an end to one of the longest hijacking crises in aviation history. Filming is scheduled to commence in December 2020.