Licence to Thrill

BA Pass,didn’t work magic at the box office but it wasn’t written off by critics either. The film,which tells the story of a young boy who engages in sexual encounters with older women in return for money,got its director Ajay Bahl noticed for experimenting with the bold theme and a sensitive handling of the subject. He was approached by Fox Star to direct City Lights,the remake of Bimal Roy’s classic Do Beegha Zameen. While that film is now being made by Shahid’s maker Hansal Mehta,Bahl has found himself another project. The filmmaker is adapting the cult Japanese novel The Informer by Akimitsu Takagi .

“It’s an industrial espionage thriller and murder mystery set in the 1950s. I will contemporise the setting,” says Bahl,who is currently in talks with the author’s family to acquire the rights.

After the release of BA Pass,Bahl was on a lookout for interesting stories. A meeting with Anurag Kashyap led to an invitation to access his library. “He invited me to browse the books in his personal collection and see if I liked anything. I picked up 10 titles and left for Goa where I spent a week reading them all. By the time I returned,I had zeroed in on the book,” says Bahl.

The director is already working on a screenplay but once the rights are purchased,he also intends to hire a screenwriter so that “the two versions can be married to make a tight script”. Bahl will also be producingthe film.

mumbai.newsline@expressindia.com