Dawn Images

Fawad Khan made quite an impact with his performance in Indian films Khoobsurat (2014) and Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (2016), gaining a huge fan following across the border. He’s now making a comeback on Indian screens through Zindagi on Zee5 alongside Zindagi Gulzar Hai costar Sanam Saeed.

Director Asim Abbasi just announced the untitled project that will star Khan and Saeed on his Instagram account, giving us a backdrop of mountains and orange, fall leaves — classic Hunza in autumn.

“Mystical land. Magical realism. And a big, old family in the middle of it,” he said in the caption, perhaps revealing the show's genres. The web series is going to be the story of a single father raising his son and trying to be the father he needed his own father to be. It is going to be a family saga with elements of magical realism and fantasy — which Ansari said is "experimenting with the genre and storyline" — set in the gorgeous land of Hunza.

"I believe this new series is my most intimate and personal work to date, dealing with universal themes of how we search for meaning in love and what happens when we lose that love. But what I'm most excited about is having been giving the opportunity to tell the story on this epic, otherworldly canvas, in a way that I don't believe has been done before," Ansari told Indian publication *Mid Day*.

Zindagi, which used to air as a TV channel, shut down in 2017, only to be resurrected as OTT platform Zee5. It kicked off with Churails in 2020 and has over 50 shows now. It continues to screen original Pakistan and India shows such as Dhoop Ki Deewar and the more recent Qatil Haseenaon Ke Naam which premiered last week.

"The platform has become a pioneer not only for India-Pakistan OTT collaborations but also for encouraging artistes to push boundaries of storytelling. It has become a home for many filmmakers like me, where we can see our craziest ideas come to fruition," Ansari told the publication.

Khan has expressed excitement for the upcoming project saying, "I loved Abbasi's film Cake. This untitled project, in my opinion, is like Cake on steroids. It's a family drama with a supernatural/magical tarka [seasoning]. I jumped at the opportunity as soon as I read the script, and it's been an amazing ride."