Bob Biswas: Sujoy Ghosh Reveals Why Abhishek Bachchan Replaced Saswata Chatterjee In Kahaani Spin-Off

Saswata Chatterjee's portrayal of contract killer Bob Biwas in Vidya Balan-starrer Kahaani has achieved a cult status when it comes to thriller genre. His 'Nomoshkar, ek minute' dialogue still leaves us with goosebumps. The iconic character is now getting a standalone film in the form of Bob Biswas which is helmed by director Sujoy Ghosh's daughter Diya. Ghosh had earlier helmed Kahaani.

In a recent interaction with a news agency, Sujoy explained why they cast Abhishek Bachchan instead of Saswata Chatterjee in Bob Biswas. Citing example of legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray, he said that the director used to recast the same character in different movies. At the same time, Ghosh also admitted that if he had directed Bob Biswas, he would have retained Chatterjee in the role. However, the casting was purely his daughter's choice.

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"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," Sujoy told IANS.

The filmmaker said that it was a very conscious decision of casting a new actor to play Bob Biswas as they wanted to move away from Kahaani.

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He continued, "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."

Bob Biswas is slated to release on December 3, 2021 on Zee5.