Team ‘Bhootchakra Pvt Ltd’ reveals what to expect from the horror-comedy

His contemporaries such as director Swapan Saha has long gone into the wilderness, but it’s Haranath Chakraborty’s flexibility to adapt to the changing times that have kept him relevant even today. The seasoned director is now all geared up for his latest ‘Bhootchakra Pvt Ltd’. The film chronicles around three close friends who end up with a mysterious antique device that can catch ghosts! Interestingly, they start a business with it. However, things get creepy when ghostly encounters make their life difficult. The horror-comedy featuring Soham Chakraborty, Gaurav Chakrabarty, Bonny Sengupta, Rittika Sen, and Srabanti Chatterjee blends the two genres perfectly.

Ahead of the film’s release, we spoke to the ‘Bhootchakra Pvt Ltd’ team to know what to expect from it and here are the excerpts:

The audience now wants new kind of films. That’s why I made this horror comedy ‘Bhootchakra Pvt Ltd’ Now content is the hero. A film will only succeed when the content is unique. Gimmicks won’t work. The story has to be honest. Earlier, the audience used to go to theatres to watch movies. But now, satellite channels and the Internet have transformed the rules of the game with a handful of options available at fingertips. Plus, there’s a continuous decay of the standalone theatres. So, where will the mass audience go to watch a mainstream Bengali movie? This explains why Dev or Jeet’s film didn’t work at box office recently but received huge amounts for satellite rights. But I believe ‘Bhootchakra Pvt Ltd’ will satisfy the audience taste.

Amit and his two friends are unemployed. Amit's great-grandfather had invented the unique Bhoot Jantra long back. First they consider that the machine might be sold off for crores, but later they decide to use it themselves by starting a business with it. They set out on a mission to capture ghosts and earn thousand rupees for each of them. Soon they start getting clients and, eventually, a family comes up with a crucial problem to have them deal with. As they set out on their adventure, the rest of the story explores their various encounters with ghosts and many other twists. This film is a great opportunity for me and I was keen to portray a character like Amit so that I could explore my potential as an actor. My main focus was to do a good film. The rest whether the film will be successful or not depends entirely on the audience.

Firstly, this kind of film is first for me and also I am really happy to retain my own name Bony here. Jokes apart, the most appealing aspect is the blend of different genres and so there’s no monotony. We have tried to maintain the flavours of each genre. We maintained a perfect balance between the actual flavours by not heightening melodrama or infusing superficiality. Padmanabha Dasgupta has penned the story with great finesse with loads of twists. After the first script reading, we were supposed to attend a few workshops. However, we didn’t do that, instead we just went through the script many times. Thus, we were able to frame the performances in our mind and when we shot the film Hara uncle (Haranath Chakraborty) said that we had the spontaneity the way he expected.

The idea of ghosts has attracted me from childhood. I tried to feel or see ghosts in the popular haunted palaces around Kolkata where we shot, however, I never came across anything supernatural. Even Soham and Hara da said they were able to sense something ghostly at the Titagarh house where we shot. Years ago I watched the Korean version of ‘Shutter’ and it was so enjoyable and I actually couldn’t sleep at night after watching that movie. My character in this film is Nemo, but his original name is Nemai. He shows off a lot but basically a bheetu (coward). He is so hilarious. I am so happy to see everyone is appreciating my act. It’s all up to the audience now. I am eagerly waiting for their response.