Actor Vidya Balan is all set to make her big-screen comeback with the upcoming murder-mystery film Neeyat, which reunites her with Shakuntala Devi director Anu Menon. The actor plays a detective named Mira Rao, who investigates a murder at a billionaire’s party in the Scottish countryside. The film, which releases on July 7, also features Ram Kapoor, Rahul Bose, Shahana Goswami, Prajakta Koli, Neeraj Kabi, Shashank Arora. Due to its startling resemblance to the Daniel Craig-starring Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (2022) teaser, the movie received a lot of attention. Some others even compared the movie’s setting and structure to Agatha Christie’s novels.
In an exclusive chat with News18, filmmaker Anu Menon talks about the comparisons and says that they finished shooting for Neeyat even before the Daniel Craig starrer released on Netflix. “We finished shooting the film in June last year, and Glass Onion… released in December 2023, so unless I stole filmmaker Rian Johnson’s script (laughs), there is no way the two films can be similar and we can copy it.”
The filmmaker believes this is the world that we live in where things are easily judged on social media, “Whenever something comes up, people tend to put it in a box so that they can understand it in a better way as they have some reference. I would like to clarify that Neeyat is a completely original film and we are really proud of it,” she says adding, “A lot of thrillers that we see around are all adaptations or remakes even internationally, but Neeyat is something that is completely fresh I guess Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery was the last big release in this genre and that is the reason the film is compared to it and I don’t think we can escape these comparisons. I would like to urge the audience to go and watch our film and then tell us if there are any similarities.
Menon feels that people who have liked Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery will enjoy Neeyat, “It has some swad (flavour). It has that whodunit setting in which there are certain tropes which are common for every film in that genre. Like it has the right combination of characters and mystery and a little bit of self awareness where we don’t want people to watch it seriously. There is a bit of humour and a wink-wink feeling so there are multiple nuances and so I feel people will enjoy it.”
This is Menon’s second collaboration with Vidya after Shakuntala Devi. Ask her if she was the obvious choice for Neeyat and Menon explains, “We had a beautiful collaboration on Shakuntala Devi. It was a tough film to shoot and we released it during the pandemic. We received a lot of love from the audience and it was a good feeling. When I started writing Neeyat and started writing the character of the detective, we felt it had to be Vidya. We didn’t approach her until we finished the entire script. I used to keep teasing her that I have something for you and she was also keen on hearing it. When I sent her the first draft, I didn’t hear back from her for almost two days and then she called me on the third day and said yes. I believe it is a record that Vidya, who is otherwise pretty selective, agreed to be a part of a film in three days (Laughs).”
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