One Night@Call centre
Chetan Bhagat’s popular novel’s film rights were purchased by Rohan Sippy who had declared that he would cast Abhishek Bachchan in the role of main protagonist, Shyam but then Atul Agnihotri read the novel and was hooked to make a film on the book. Recent news suggest that now he has purchased rights from Rohan Sippy and is making film. According to news he has declared that Salman Khan will do a guest role. He will play character of writer (Chetan Bhagat) travelling in the train from Kanpur to Delhi.
Atul has declared that Shraman Joshi will play the role of Shyam and Jayad Khan will play the role of Varun.
Till now Shraman Joshi has played only comedy based roles and I don’t know if he can play this role where he has to play a character who is not hero in his acts. He is suppressed by his realities in the world. His Girl friend has dumped him. His career sees no light of hope. He cant express what he wishes. He thinks that everybody takes him as “good for nothing person” and worst is that he also has accepted this as his destiny. Will Shraman be a good choice to play such a role?
Or even earlier Rohan’s choice Abhishek was a good selection? Abhishek is more than 6 ft tall and his appearance is not of a subdued person. Shraman also presents sharp features.
If I have to cast actors for film based on this novel than I would go like following.
Shyam: Ritesh Deshmukh or Tushar Kapur or Rakesh Nath, They resemble with the description, Shyam is given in the book. His character has to be of age between 26-28 years. He is not performer though he wants to but he lacks self confidence and he has stopped to believing in self. He has reached to some extent to the level of despondency and is waiting miracles to happen. Most of time he dwells back in flash backs to re-live the moments of his life, he thinks were good. These actors can give performance required by the role. He needs support of his friends and whenever he gets this he can do efforts to get what he desires in life. He is fed up with his “avoiding the facts nature” and is living in duality. On one hand he wish to accept the life as its turned up and on the other hand he also wishes to revamp his life. Like a true filmi story he gets everything in the end.
Priyanka: Konkana Sen Sarma (morphologically absolutely fit)/ Tanu Shri Datta/ Ayesha Takia
Priyanka, a typical Delhi girl, is not very beautiful but very confident of what she does and what she likes. Her mother wants her to get settled with a well settled guy and not someone like Shyam – a call centre agent whose career is not stable. Priyanka shares a mixed relationship with her widow mother. She cares for her emotions but hates her over reactive nature. Priyanka has broken her relationship with Shyam though both continue working in same call centre in same shift where Shyam is immediate boss of Priyanka. She liked and loved Shyam but hated his dilly dally nature and still hates his lacking of taking proper decisions at proper time. She still provoke him to stand up before the world when his manager humiliate him infront of all agents. She is also in duality as far as her marriage is concerned and says yes to a USA based Microsoft engineer but she does not want to marry soon without meeting him in person and wants atleast 3 months time before marrying. When she realises software guy had sent his morphed photo then she breaks the marriage and again come back to Shyam. Don’t recall which actress is finalised by Atul.
Varun: Zayad Khan and Mohit Ahlawat resemble him in physical appearance. A well built and tough guy who has an image of casanova in eyes of call centre’s fellow colleagues. He is carefree and he loves Esha, who is also an agent. He is not worried about his future and he has plans to do something more significant if he leaves call centre’s job. He provokes and supports Shyam to do some adventures and he provokes Shyam to try to get back Priyanka’s love. He supports Shyam when he finds out that Shyam is tapping telephone of Priyanka. He takes Shyam along with him to men’s WC to listen what girls are talking in adjacent female WC. He loves Esha but feel wounded when finds that she has lost her virginity under the assurance that guy will make her a model.
Esha : Sneha Ullal / Raima Sen, a Chandigarh girl not taller than 5ft 5” but filled with hopes of becoming model. She is thrilled with her naval piercing and lives with her dreams of becoming model. Call centre career is just a façade and support to live in delhi so that she can pursue her search to get modelling debut. Not so big role.
Radhika : younger clone of Divya Datta is needed for this role. Some one like Rani Mukherjee, as she wont do this small role.
This role needs a actress who can travel on path of emotions. She is married and lives with her in laws, who are very conservative and her mother in law is very demanding and does not like her. Radhika is living a busy life where she has to do all the home works and have to come at time on duty and have to do night shifts also. Her life has no solace. Inspite of all her sacrifices her mother in law is not satisfied and complains to her son that Radhika neglected her needs. He calls Radhika at call centre and scolds her. Calamity falls on Radhika when Varun’s game on her Husband reveals that he loves some other girl. She collects her strength and calls off her marriage. Perhaps Diya Mirza may do the role.
Shyam’s time pass girl friend : Sneha Ullal , if Raima plays Esha. This girl is bit childish in her behaviour and likes kiddish talks. She is deeply in to the sms exchanges.
Millitory Uncle: Om Puri/ Naseer / Boman Irani
He is a closed person and does not share his emotions. He is living life of a recluse as his daughter in law has thrown him out of the house because he too was very demanding and was interfering in their life. He too realises his mistakes and wishes to patch up with his son, grandson and daughter in law.
Manager: Arshad Warsi/ Rahul Bose/Raj Pal Yadav
This guy is in his mid 30s. Very shrewd. Someone like who has no capabilities but somehow has got chance to get the post. He is involved all the time in secret planning to promote his own career. He does not feel hesitation in exploiting his subordinates for his own benefits and his behaviour towards Shyam is some what cruel. He is cynical and thinks that as he has earned management degree so he knows everything in world. He likes to explain things by drawing lines, curves on paper. He does not feel any hitch while sending Shyam and Varun’s hard work by his name. But he possesses a poor personality and he covers this lacking by his dictatorial manners.
Lady in the Train: Should look extremely pretty, mysterious, attractive and intelligent and confident who can convince an author to write next book on a theme she thinks is right. Rather she should have an appeal so that she can force author to listen to her and to follow her demands. And as Author in the book has hinted this lady as God so she should be an ethereal beauty. But not a girl but a woman like Hema Malini was in her peak days . or Rekha was in her Silsila days. Aishwarya Rai fits the role but will she do a Salman Khan’s film? I think next as Vida Balan/ Shilpa shetty/ kareena kapoor? Are there some really beautiful actresses around for this role?
Salman as Author certainly adds star appeal in the film but he has to look younger than her age.
It’s a good book to make film as characters are well etched in the book and screen play wont demand much hard work. According to reports Chetan Bhagat himself is doing the screen play. Hope Atul Agnihotri makes a good and as interesting film as novel is.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
rk – you’ve made your version of the film !!! LOL
Any idea who is producing/directing Five point someone by the same author ??? That is more realistic and fun to do than One night at Call Center.
KK: yes FPSO is visually more better to make a film given the twists. I had read on Chetan’s website that someone was making film on FPSO but it looks that project is stopped in between because no progress is reported anywhere. Major problem is- In India we dont deal with real places like IITs. How to put IIT’s name in film? That could be a hinderance in making the film on FPSO.
RK – Black friday anyone ???
You can change IIT to somehting else … like Hindustan Institute of Technology (HIT) …
Wow that sounds good too !!!
KK: what abt Black friday?
Yes producer Director can change the name of Institute where events are happening if Chetan becomes ready for this change. Perhaps if a good and big producer is there than he can sort out any kind of problem. Major Saab had shown NDA AT Pune.
i hope atul doesnt fuck this up maan for the sake of commerciality..i cant imagine zayed dancing in the call centre with his tee off or salman for dat sake ….anywayz i hopeful since chetan bhagat is on the panel of screenplay writers..jus hoping to watch good adaptation of the book
@ kk
yeah even i think movie on 5.some1 wud be a better choice
- I haven’t yet read the book… it must be really good to have attracted Bollywood to it.
Rk – Like black friday got into trouble with the courts for taking real names (Advani, Dawood, Tiger Memon etc), maybe an adaptation of FPSO may get into trouble too…. considering the backdrop is IIT and well, chetan bhagat hasn’t been too generous in his praise of the institituion. It’s subtle and humorous … and yet it is there !! …
Oz – FPSO is typical coommercial college potboiler masala…. the geeks, the middle class idiots, the loser guys who manage to get the girl… the high profiled studs .. Vodka … Pink floyd … engineering … etc etc
Very very relatable … and the chapters ‘Longest day in my life’ looks like straight out of a film !!!
Sammy!
its not necessary that all call centre agents sing ” calls chhorenge, gup shap karenge” inside the call centre room Ala Botany Chhorenge matainee dekhenge (Shiva):)Atul may search other occasions to put Zayed in to the dancing. Salman in the small role of Author (hardly 15 minutes role) can be an appealing factor as film based on this book does not need big stars (because of age factor) but how to show him an author who has published only one book? That puts his age between 26-30 and it will be a tough job for makeup to bring Salman in that age group and he has to look a MBA+B.E. :”> a real tough job for Salman and Atul. No concession for good looks here.
Oz,
Five point some one and one night@call centre, both are readable books and you will want to finish each book in one sitting.
These days most of the authors write in visual style but Chetan really writes “Scenes”. Description is less and dialogues and situations are more, which is desirable in movie making. Rather than to describe the room, furniture, weather conditions, he directly hit the happenings.
KK: I think BF is different matter. Its related to a big sad and unfortunate happening in Bombay and subject deals with minority-majority factor and lot of politics is involved. Court case is involved. When BF is released then we can discuss that film in detail.
FPSO:
I think major hurdle in making a film with name of IIT is the less number of IITians in the society. To write a book nand to publish a book you dont need a major finance and if all IITs and technical graduates of other engg. colleges read the book then author and publishers can make profit but to make a film on such subject where large section of society cant understand whats happening in the film. what are credits etc is not a safe game. Screen Play of FPSO should bring more general touch than the book. It will be interesting to see Munna Bhai MBBS’s Hollywood version because there Screen plays touch masses.
@RK… Bageeezus… you have dissected the whole novel..damn..awesome.. Any plan of making a spoof? Lol!!!
What’s more exciting – Seeing a movie adapted from a book you may have read OR Is it better to see a story untold before.
Kapil:
Both cases have their own thrill. Suppose we have read Anna Karenina then its a different journey to watch a film based on that novel as then you already have an understanding of the characters, situations, twists and its wonderful to watch if Director is able to show all those nuances of story which you got from reading the book. Knowing a story may lessen the charm, may be in a suspense thriller but in other case it really does not matter if story is known or not. Otherwise why would we see a film again and again. Its not only story but a 1.5 hrs to 2.5 hrs journey on celluloid which bind us. The visual presentation should attract us. Moreover its difficult to find a stry which is not told before
Some shades of every story can be found in the stories already told since ages:x
We read comics in childhood and if today some one make film on Phantom then we will be highly thrilled though we know the charcter and story. If some one makes film on an event, happened in your neighbour then your curiosity level will be higest because you know the happenings and now wish to see how director has shown same event on screen. Did we not knowing story of phoolen Devi before? But when Shekhar Kapoor presented his version of her story on screen people went mad to see it.
If any day Jena Jameson writes an autobiography & if made into a movie, I will watch the movie. Same goes for Jena Haze, Mercedes & all babes from the Vivid collection.^:)^
Muzzy: I suppose they dont have to write autobiography and they cant even write, they have to release albums full of pictures. They are pictographical creatures and their book shd be called “Autophotobiography”:)
pls give me a contact no n email hiten mumbai
pal_swa [at] yahoo
can i know who is the website owner will u plz mail me m waiting:x
reallly
plz plz plz mail me:x
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