Known for Marathi blockbusters like Mauli, Classmates, Zombivli and Faster Fene among others, Aditya is currently basking in the glory of his recent Hindi theatrical debut with Munjya.
Featuring Abhay Verma, Sharvari, Mona Singh, Suhas Joshi, S Sathyaraj among others, the film released on June 7, 2024. In an exclusive interview with The Free Press Journal, filmmaker talks about what pushed him to make a film on the famous folklore from the Konkan region of Maharashtra and more.
Munjya, that garnered more than 28 crores so far. When asked about the challenges to narrate the story through a CGI artist, he shares. “For me, this world isn’t new so I didn’t have to research anything on it. I had grown up with the story of Munjya. With folklores, there are so many versions of it so there are several interpretations of Munjya by different people. We went with the common interpretation in the film. When this film came to me, it was mostly written. I had the first draft ready when I got to the screenplay of the film.”
“I was separately working on the similar story but only my team knew about it. They also knew that Dinesh Vijan was also working on the similar subject. So, I reached out to him and proposed a collaboration. Yogesh is the original writer of the film and it was earlier told through a female protagonist but we made certain changes and re-wrote it,” he adds.
Producer Dinesh’s horror-verse comprises of Stree, Roohi and Bhediya. Sharing further on Munjya being the part of the existing slate of films, Aditya reveals, “Dinesh saw the potential in Munjya to be a part of his horror-verse since he wanted to build it with the characters that have come from the folklore space.”
Munjya saw an amazing crossover with Varun Dhawan’s Bhediya. When probed further on the sequel to his film, Aditya states, “Bhediya was majorly targeted by the older generation. It had a certain maturity to it. Munjya is more for the Harry Potter audience. Even when we created the CGI artist, we kept a round and sweet face that has some innocence in him.”
On a concluding note, Aditya is keeping his fingers crossed for a bit longer theatrical run of his film than the usual especially when Chandu Champion is arriving this Friday. “We are hoping that if we could make it over this weekend and we are quite confident about it,” he signs off.
