EXCLUSIVE | 'Munjya' director Aditya Sarpotdar: 'We were very confident that people are going to enjoy the film'

Directed by Aditya Sarpotdar and written (dialogue and screenplay) by Niren Bhatt, Munjya is a tale all the way from the mysterious and marvelous Konkan coast.

While the trailer of  _Munjya_ had garnered excitement among the cinegoers, it was a question of whether it would get footfalls since it has no big names. However, the film has surprised everyone with its novel concept and positive word of mouth as it has minted more than Rs 100 crore at the box-office.

With the feat, this  horror-comedy  is 2024’s third solid hit after Yami Gautam’s ‘Article 370’ and Ajay Devgn’s ‘Shaitaan. '

In an exclusive interview with Firstpost, Aditya spoke about his commercial expectations of the film, why A-listers have eluded the genre, and wanting to bring Alia Bhatt and Shraddha Kapoor on board for the film.

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Edited excerpts from the interview

Were you expecting such massive numbers?

Honestly no. The thing is we were hoping that the film does well. We were very confident that people are going to enjoy the film because we did a few screenings before we released it.  And based on those screenings that we had, we got a very good response, which kind of give us a confidence that it will be liked by people, and it’ll do a decent. But, how well you never kind of can anticipate, you know, for a film like Munjya because there’s so many market forces that also come into play.

There are so many things that kind of work for a film or do not also many times. We were a film that was had no cast, no big budget, with a very limited promotion, and, coming at a time where there was an election campaign, the election results were announced, and we had an India Pakistan match also. So all those factors were playing on our minds that this was going to adversely affect the business of the film. But when it released, kind of everything got proven wrong.

Because people say that when you make a horror-comedy, the genre itself is a star. I mean, because most of the horror movies that we have made, most of them have starred newcomers. So I’m sure you must have been confident about the content that you have. So what if there are no big stars in it?

I completely get your point in the genre being exciting. I also feel that what has happened is in the last few years, we have only had horror comedies at least on OTT. We have not had horror comedies go to theaters. Like, Booth Police went straight to OTT. Phone Bhoot didn’t do that well, that is the last horror comedy I know of. The last film that I can really refer to, which was a lesser known cast, was again Stree, but Shraddha was a big star by then.

Rajkummar Rao too had quite a decent following because he’d done some 2-3 big hits before. So Munjya came in a very unique space because it had no star cast. Maybe apart from a guest appearance that was by Sathayaraj, who, again, is a very established Tamil star. But because I had no big actors, we really could not really guess what we could do at the box office.

I think two of the biggest horror films that we have made in terms of star cast have to be the 1979 Jaani Dushman, which Rajkumar Kohli made, and then Ram Gopal Varma made Bhoot. Post that, why do you feel these big stars are  not wanting to do horror movies? Because they are big stars and they don’t want to be scared on the big screen? What do you feel is the reason?

The 3rd film that I would put into your list is Bhool Bhulaiyaa. Akshay Kumar was a big star then. Ameesha Patel was a big star then. Vidya Balan was a big star there. And even the secondary cast that was in that film, right from Paresh Rawal to Rajpal Yadav. So I think then the film had done really well.  But I think also it’s been that we have not had a lot of makers who attempted these films. Like, Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 with Kartik did so well at the box office. Then there are 2, 3 more attempts and they did not do well.

So, again, the people who were attempting another horror comedy just kind of took a back seat. It is not just about the genre. We have seen so many attempts that have failed, and we’ve seen in fact, we have had more failures than successes in this genre.

Towards the end, we see that Munjya has its eyes on Varun Dhawan now. So it’s Bhediya meets Munjya. Are you planning something like that?

There is a plan. You have picked up on that because it’s clearly indicating the plan. The fact that Munjya will make definitely an appearance or a connection to the next few films to follow in the Maddock horror comedy universe. How, in what way, how much is something that you’ll definitely have to wait and watch because that’s the fun part of how we integrate him into the next films. But you will see the Munjya and Bhediya connect.

Was Alia Bhatt also a choice for you for this film?

No. I’ll tell you what. There’s a bit of a confusion here. When Munjya was initially written as a film, my writer, Yogesh Chandekar had written it, and before I came on board, he did a film with a female protagonist. So Bittu, which was Abhay’s character, was a girl. So it was not for Sharvari’s part that Alia was approached. It was for Abhay’s part she was approached. And then after Alia, even Shraddha was approached. I think things were not working out and with Shraddha. She was interested in doing it, but because she comes from Stree and that whole universe being the same, we didn’t want that confusion to happen with the audience.

I felt the character had to be a boy, a young boy, who was trying to find his confidence in life and who was also in love with an older girl. And, as a director, I put these points in front of the producer and he completely agreed, and he also supported me in this. So when the character completely became a boy from a girl, there was no other chance for us to approach Alia or Shraddha again at at all. So we completely shifted our focus, and we started casting for a boy.