In the upcoming film Bob Biswas, director Sujoy Ghosh explains why actor Saswata Chatterjee was replaced by Abhishek Bachchan. In 2012’s Kahaani, Chatterjee played the contract killer, but Bachchan will take over the character in the spin-off, which will be directed by Diya Annapurna Ghosh and released on ZEE5 on December 3.
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Sujoy Ghosh claimed that if he had directed Bob Biswas, he would have kept Chatterjee in the part, citing the example of filmmaker Satyajit Ray recasting the same character in different films.
“I am saying it is not impossible to recreate the world of Bob Biswas where Saswata, who played Bob earlier, can be cast. In fact, if I was helming the film, Saswata would have been a choice, but Diya is directing the film and this is the choice she made. She has her vision to the film. Our idea is to create a new film, in which the world of Bob is different from what we have seen in Kahaani,” he told IANS.
He added, “It was a very conscious decision of casting a new actor to play Bob Biswas because I wanted to move away from Kahaani, this is not that film. The world of this film is different. This is a new film, which has its own standing. Through this film, we have attempted to create a new world of Bob Biswas which has a fresh new perspective to the story. That is in fact, one of the reasons why I did not direct the film. In the earlier film, when the introduction of Bob happened he only had a presence of eight minutes. Now, we have a full story on him.”
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A similar circumstance occurred lately when Abhishek was replaced in the comedic sequel Bunty Aur Babli 2 in reverse. With Rani Mukerji, Siddhant Chaturvedi, and Sharvari Wagh, Saif Ali Khan was cast.
