After delivering three consecutive path-breaking movies to the audience based on Shakespearean tragedies, Vishal Bhardwaj is now all set to make his next voyage towards making a world around Agatha Christie’s murder thriller adventures.
The director, producer, music composer maestro is well known for his adaptations of Shakespeare’s tragedies Macbeth, Othello, and Hamlet as Maqbool (2003), Omkara(2007), and Haider (2014). Despite delivering an exhilarating performance from Maqbool powerful cast starring Irrfan Khan, Tabu, Pankaj Kapoor, Naseeruddin Shah, and Om Puri, to name a very few, Maqbool failed to receive a good response from the Indian audience while drawing critical acclamations from abroad.
Pankaj Kapoor received critical acclamation for his performance as Jahangir Khan (Duncan). The critics all around the world recognized Irrfan Khan’s performance as one of the most phenomenal and brilliant performances of the era in the role of Shakespeare’s tragedian protagonist Macbeth. Many critics even expressed that Irrfan Khan was made for the role of Maqbool. Later, Omkara starring Ajay Devgan, Kareena Kapoor, and Saif Ali Khan had good commercial success as well. Saif Ali Khan’s performance has been recognized critically. So, it has been Haider. Tabu was critically recognized for the role of Queen Gertrude as Ghazala.
Vishal Bharadwaj, with his distinct background music, plays an epic tragedy on the celluloid. During the epic days of lockdown, Bharadwaj got caught up in his Mussoorie home and said that he was worried and confused about his work on how this great pandemic will affect his filmmaking process. The director said that while in Mussoorie, he became a huge fan of murder thrillers and excitedly stated his love for murder thrillers by Alfred Hitchcock.
Thrillers like Rope, which was shot in only nine, take remains as a work of inspiration to him at times. “Hitchcock shot an entire film in a single room,” exclaimed the director. In his recent virtual interviews, Bharadwaj declared that he is all set to debut Agatha Christie’s world. He stated that before the arrival of the digital age, with people spending most of their time on social media, books were essential to derive pleasure.
People spent time in libraries as much as they now do on the social media platform. Bharadwaj also stated that he was not a fan of Christie’s work in his days, but with time, his perception towards the books changed. The director also expressed how much he loves the characters like
Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, Bharadwaj hinted that the adaptation would throw light towards introducing a young woman solving a case and in the process partnering with an unlikely guy. Therefore they set on the mission to unravel the mystery. The location of the film will be in Auli hills, and provided the ambiance of the novel; the hills will be a character in itself.
On contacting the estate, they informed that Vishal was offered a collection of books from which he chose one, and the makers keep it a mystery for now. Agatha Christie’s great-grandson, James Prichard, expressed with joy that he is excited to collaborate with such a visionary filmmaker like Vishal Bharadwaj and stated that he is one the few directors who can deliver justice to the novel.
