Director Vishal Bhardwaj subconsciously comes up with strong female characters

The generational oppression that women have faced makes him ‘feel guilty’ as a man, says filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj, who believes it is his duty as a storyteller to speak up against injustice, whether it is political or social. Right from the beginning, Bhardwaj’s stories have featured women with agency, be it Tabu in Maqbool, Kareena Kapoor Khan and Konkona Sensharma in Omkara, Priyanka Chopra Jonas in 7 Khoon Maaf or Sanya Malhotra and Radhika Madan in Pataakha.

Advertisement

The filmmaker is making a streaming debut with Charlie Chopra & The Mystery of Solang Valley, a web series that revolves around the titular female detective, Wamiqa Gabbi. Bhardwaj hopes to develop a franchise around the character. The National Award-winner said while strong women characters come naturally to him, but when he writes he has to make an effort to create ‘good male characters’ to secure finances. “Otherwise, they don’t give you money on female-oriented things,” he said.

“Charlie Chopra & The Mystery of Solang Valley, which will start streaming on SonyLIV from September 27, was earlier planned as a movie. But he faced difficulties in getting it financed with Gabbi as the lead, as she was a relatively unknown face at the time.

“After the pandemic, I was trying to raise money because I wanted to work with Wamiqa. I thought she would be the correct choice for this part, but she did not have commercial standing in the market. So, I was not getting that kind of money, which was required to make this. That’s when I happened to meet Danish Khan (of SonyLIV), who is the creative head. When he heard the idea, he said, ‘Why don’t you convert this into a series?’ So, that’s how the OTT debut happened.”

The upcoming six-part series also stars Priyanshu Painyuli, Naseeruddin Shah, Lara Dutta, Neena Gupta, Ratna Pathak Shah, Gulshan Grover, Chandan Roy Sanyal, and Paoli Dam, among others.