Director Shoojit Sircar and his producing partner Ronnie lahiri are confident that the story of Piku, starring Amitabh Bachchan, Irrfan and Deepika Padukone, will connect with the audience through its “endearing” portrayal of a family. “It is a very simple father-daughter drama. Nothing is overdone in the film. It is a new genre for us. I told Juhi (Chaturvedi) that I should take the audience into the middle of a family. You feel like you are in the drawing room of this family. You follow some four or five beautiful characters,” Shoojit said and added, “There is nothing definite about the story. It is just about a working girl (Piku) and her father in Delhi. How they deal with their everyday problems, forms the plot.”
The movie, slated to hit the screens on May 8, marks the coming together of Shoojit, Ronnie and scriptwriter Juhi Chaturvedi, the winning team behind Vicky Donor. Ronnie said he liked the quirkiness of the idea but also the fact that its heart was in the right place. “Comedy can’t be just slapstick. like Vicky, this one was a quirky idea but with a heart. This is why we decided to produce it and approached the actors. With Amitabh Bachchan we have a long standing relationship and we even did a film called Shoebite together but unfortunately it did not release,” Ronnie said.
The producer and director, who are behind Rising Sun Films, are happy with the response to the trailer, which shows Bachchan as an elderly man troubled with constipation problem. Shoojit jokingly refers to it as his “below the belt philosophies.” “Irrfan and Deepika’s pairing is unusual. I am glad that all three agreed to work on the film. They are great in their field. Irrfan is the finest actor that we have, Amitabh Bachchan is a legend while Deepika is the number one heroine today and a great actor.” The producer and director are confident that the recent box office luck of content-driven movies like Badlapur and NH10 will rub off on Piku.
“This year the films that have done business are only the so called out-of-the-box movies. Haider and Queen won national awards. Audience today don’t want to leave their brain behind because movie watching is an expensive experience,” said Ronnie.