Sudhir Mishra will adapt Manu Joseph’s Serious Men for the big screen soon. The screenplay and dialogue for the film is being written by Bhavesh Mandalia, known for his work on OMG – Oh My God!
“The better the book, the more difficult it is to adapt it and this one is amazing. I would love to retain Manu’s acerbic viewpoint since it matches with my worldview,” Mishra told Mumbai Mirror.
The award-winning novel is about a clerk who falsely promotes his son as a child prodigy, while working for international scientists.
The novel is about an underdog, says Sudhir. The director “loved” the clerk’s character in the novel and says that he will try and evoke similar emotions through his film.
Producer Sejal Shah acquired the film rights of the book earlier this year. They will start casting once the script is locked.
Joseph was unimpressed by previous offers to adapt his novel. “But Sejal is a reader. It’s not like she took a narration, saw masala in the story and decided to turn it into a film. I liked her and her team who were clear that I would be kept in the loop at every stage and the final interpretation would not come as surprise to me,” he was quoted as saying.
Joseph liked the fact that Sudhir understood the tone and nature of the book. The author also noted that being too faithful to the novel could spell trouble for the film adaptation.
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“I respect the needs of the screen, this is going to be a Hindi film but I believe some of the monologues can be retained. I’m going to sit back and have fun watching other people interpret my novel. It’s such a slog writing dialogue and it will be interesting how others come up with their inferences,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mishra recently announced that he’d make a sequel to his Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi.
Image Courtesy: Khulasaa