‘Bhindi Bazaar’ is for multiplexes, says Britain-based producer

NEW DELHI - Britain-based producer Karan Arora says his first Bollywood venture “Bhindi Bazaar”, which deals with the issue of pickpocketing in Mumbai, has the global appeal of “Slumdog Millionaire” and elements of “Satya” but is not inspired by them.

“The movie has an international appeal like ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ and at the same time it has very similar elements of ‘Satya’. But there are no inspirations taken from these movies,” Arora told IANS in an interview.

The movie deals with the issue of pickpocketing in the infamous and densely populated area of Mumbai’s Bhindi Bazaar. The film explores the city’s dark underbelly.

” ‘Bhindi Bazaar’ has everything for multiplex audiences - intelligent screenplay, entertainment with various elements like crime and thrill, among others. It is a thriller but at the same time it is also very realistic,” he said.

Arora is the CEO of High Grounds Entertainment Ltd, which started its Indian production house - Picture Thought production - last year.

According to Arora, the motto of the production house is to generate content-based movies.

With the recent success of small-budget, strong content-driven movies like “Peepli Live”, Arora feels “Bhindi Bazaar” will appeal to audiences in India.

“People often asked us why didn’t we start with a star-studded movie, but our reply was that we just want to first slip into the market, do our homework and test the waters.

“We can make the noises later after proving ourselves. This has been our strategy so far,” he added.

With a Hollywood-driven philosophy, Arora says his team spends a lot of time in “script farming”.

“Script farming is a word we use in Hollywood. One does a lot of research and reads a lot of scripts before shortlisting a few, potential projects. So far, we have liked three scripts,” said Arora.

“One of them is ‘Bhindi Bazaar’ and the other two are ‘Padosi’ and ‘Let’s talk Love’,” he added.

“Bhindi Bazaar” was recently showcased at the Cannes Film Festival in France. It has been directed by Ankush Bhatt and has a power-packed star cast comprising Kay Kay Menon, Deepti Naval, Shilpa Shukla, Pawan Malhotra, Gautam Sharma and debutante American artist Caterina Lopez, among others.

(Shilpa Raina can be contacted at shilpa.r@ians.in)