Dibakar Banerjee plans a movie on Byomkesh Bakshi

Starring Sushant Singh Rajput in the lead, the film will be co-produced by Yash Raj Films and Dibakar Banerjee Productions. The whodunit film will be called Detective Byomkesh Bakshi.

Back in the ’90s, detective Byomkesh Bakshi became a household name, thanks to Basu Chatterjee’s TV series on Doordarshan. Now, a couple of decades later, Bengali writer Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay’s famous fictional detective is set for a Bollywood outing.

Starring Sushant Singh Rajput in the lead, the film titled Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! (DBB) will be co-produced by Yash Raj Films and Dibakar Banerjee Productions. Dibakar will also don the director’s hat.

Set in 1942, the film will show a war-torn Kolkata during the ’40s as it follows the first adventure of Byomkesh, who is fresh out of college. “We will show the origin of the character and it will be a completely new interpretation. From where and how he came into being. So the film will start with his first-ever case and his maiden adventure,” says Dibakar. “It’s basically a reboot. In fact, we could have called this Byomkesh Begins.”

Sushant, in the film, will be pitted against an evil genius who is out to destroy the world. “He has that dormant volcano thing about him that is just right for my Byomkesh. He looks quiet, self-absorbed and withdrawn, but only till you challenge him,” the director says.

The period thriller starts shooting in January 2014 and will hit theatres in December next year. And lastly, is it true that DBB will be a franchise? “Byomkesh is India’s first true-blue detective. So I have a huge future in mind for the character,” says Dibakar.

A Bengali version too…
Filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh, whose sudden death left movie lovers in a state of shock, was also working on a film on the Bengali detective Byomkesh Bakshi, called Satyanweshi. Interestingly, the Bengali film features filmmaker Sujoy Ghosh (of Kahaani; 2012 fame) in the title role. In his last tweet, Ghosh talked about having finished shooting the detective thriller.

HT Image