Since Friday, his phone hasn’t stopped ringing, Prosenjit Chatterjee says. Some calls are from members in the Hindi film industry, others from his peers in Bengali cinema. They all have the same thing to say — that Jubilee deserves a round of applause. “I couldn’t have asked for a better OTT debut,” beams Chatterjee, who has dominated Bengali cinema for almost four decades.

With Jubilee, creator-director Vikramaditya Motwane goes back to the Hindi film industry of the ’40s and ’50s. Chatterjee plays Srikant Roy, a powerful movie mogul owning Roy Talkies and a star-maker in his own right. The actor says he had two reasons to give his nod to the Amazon Prime Video offering — his love for that era’s cinema, and the opportunity to work with Motwane. “Vikram is one of the finest directors of new-age cinema. When he narrated the subject to me, he said that from the day he started penning it six years ago, he had only me in mind for Srikant Roy. What makes him one of the finest directors is that even today, he [behaves like] an assistant director — he will do everything himself. Also, I know about people from that era, and their contribution to Indian cinema. One of my favourite films has been Guru Dutt’s Kagaz Ke Phool [1959]. When I entered Jubilee’s set, I hugged Vikram and told him that he had fulfilled one of my dreams.”