Sudhir Mishra's next to be based on Manu Joseph's award-winning novel Serious Men

Sudhir Mishra is known for his realistic, serious and dark films in Bollywood. Be it his first film Yeh Woh Manzil To Nahi in 1987, Chameli in 2003 or his much-acclaimed 2005 film Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi — they have been unconventional from the get-go. [caption id=“attachment_4046821” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  (Left) Manu Joseph with his award-winning novel Serious Men. Image courtesy: Facebook/ Authors with their Books; (right) Sudhir Mishra. Image courtesy: Facebook/ Upcoming Movies[/caption] The story of the book revolves around a clerk who lives in a chawl and works for various prolific international scientists. He, in his ambition to grow and prosper, plots lies concerning an illicit romance of his boss; and falsely promotes his 10-year-old son as a genius, thus appeasing his wear soap-opera addicted wife, as mentioned in the synopsis of the book in Amazon. Speaking about the book and his ideas about the film, Mishra told Mumbai Mirror that “the better the book, the more difficult it is to adapt it.” “I would love to retain Manu’s acerbic viewpoint since it matches with my worldview. I loved the father’s character the most for his range of emotions and view of life. I’m going to try and evoke similar emotions,” he said. Former journalist and producer Sejal Shah bought the rights to this book two months ago and introduced Joseph to Mishra. The same report states that Joseph says that he has taken a sigh of relief after Mishra came on board the director since offers in the past regarding the movie adaption of Serious Men were rather unimpressive. Joseph says, “Sudhir gets the tone of the book and the fact that if we want to state something important, we should not necessarily abandon the idea of entertainment. At the same time, just because we wish to entertain, we need not be frivolous. I believe that the novel is a unique medium and those who try to be too faithful to it usually end up in a lot of creative trouble. 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.” National Award-winning writer Bhavesh Mandalia (for OMG-Oh My God!) has been roped in to write the dialogue and screenplay of the film. The casting process is slated to commence as soon as the script of the film is locked, reports Mumbai Mirror.