I wanted to be on my toes: Sujoy Ghosh

Filmmaker Sujoy Ghosh says he didn’t want to make any mistake with his latest film Kahaani that released yesterday. So much so that he went for an entirely new team for this project that has actor Vidya Balan in the lead, playing the role of a pregnant woman, who flies down to Kolkata from London in search of her husband.

“With an old team sometimes you tend to go complacent. I wanted to be on my toes, so barring music composers Vishal-Shekhar, the entire team of Kahaani is new,” says the former journalist-turned-filmmaker, whose last two films, Aladin (2009) and Home Delivery: Aapko... Ghar Tak (2005), both tanked at the box office.

While Ghosh is hopeful that Vidya’s success with The Dirty Picture will pull the audience to theatres, his “new formula” also includes a famous Tagore number sung by actor Amitabh Bachchan. “Bachchan saab has an overpowering voice that one would listen to. He sung Ekla Cholo Re quite convincingly,” beams Ghosh, adding, “When I approached him for the song, he told me, ‘Tuune toh mujhe playback singer hi banaa diya’.”

Interestingly, one will get to see a host of Bengali actors in the film, including the male lead, Parambrata Chatterjee, who plays a police officer. “I wanted to make the characters look and sound as real as possible,” reasons Ghosh.

Talking about his upcoming projects, Ghosh, who recently said that he is working on the sequel of his directorial debut Jhankar Beats (2002), says, “I have a story in place for the sequel, but we haven’t locked the script yet. It will be less of music and more of life this time.” And, will it have the same cast? “Of course yes! I can’t imagine Jhankar Beats without that same gang… Juhi Chawla, Sanjay Suri, Rahul Bose and all of them,” he assures.

Sujoy speaks...

On Big B

Amitabh Bachchan is an ardent Tagore fan, so he immediately agreed when I offered him Ekla Cholo Re

On Kolkata

Kolkata is a nice concoction of modernity with old school charm. There is chic metro rail as well as hand-pulled rickshaws

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