Netflix drops the trailer for ‘Akka,’ a gangster saga led by Keerthy Suresh and Radhika Apte

Netflix released the trailer for “Akka” at a launch event in Mumbai on October 22, setting up a gangster saga built around a rivalry between two women. The series premieres on October 30, and it pairs Keerthy Suresh and Radhika Apte as the heads of opposing sides in a fictional world ruled, for generations, by women.

Suresh plays Bhavani, the reigning leader of a crime syndicate in the invented kingdom of Pernuru; Apte plays Rudra, a rival who challenges the existing order. The story is set in 1980s South India, and it is directed by Dharmaraj Shetty and produced by YRF Entertainment. The ensemble also includes Tanvi Azmi, Mahesh Manjrekar, Anshuman Pushkar and Monica Panwar.

Two leads, one throne

Both stars framed their characters in the material released around the trailer. Suresh described Bhavani as someone defined by what she is willing to protect.

“Bhavani is a woman who knows what she stands for and will go to great lengths to protect her legacy. What makes her fascinating is that her choices are never easy, especially when the stakes are life and death.”

Apte, in turn, described Rudra as a character who refuses to accept the limits placed on her: “Rudra is someone who refuses to be defined by the circumstances she finds herself in.” The series, in other words, is pitched as a collision between a ruler guarding her inheritance and a challenger who rejects the terms of the world she was born into.

A genre turned on its head

The hook the filmmakers are selling is a gangster story in which the power centre is female by design rather than by exception. Director Dharmaraj Shetty said the appeal was the chance to build a crime world with its own internal logic: “What drew me to Akka was the chance to give the gangster genre a world with its own rules, and to tell a large, entertaining saga through characters and relationships we don’t often see at its centre.”

Netflix framed the project the same way. Tanya Bami, the service’s series head in India, said that in “Akka,” “women are not just part of the story, they are the power centre” — a one-line summary of what separates the show from a more conventional entry in the genre.

The Mumbai launch itself drew attention beyond the plot. Suresh appeared in a peacock-green Kanjeevaram saree with a gold border, a traditional look that circulated widely alongside the trailer. That pairing — a glossy, star-driven event and a trailer engineered to travel — is the standard shape of a modern streaming launch, and it did its job of putting “Akka” in front of a large audience a little over a week before release.

“Akka” begins streaming on October 30.