Professor Shonku now on celluloid

One of the most popular and well known characters in Bengali science, Professor Shonku will come back to life as SVF, eastern India's largest production house is all set to produce a Bengali feature film on the same.

Featuring the fictional scientist created and popularised by the maestro, legendary writer-filmmaker Satyajit Ray, befittingly, the film will be directed by none other than Sandip Ray – a renowned filmmaker in his own right. The film is an adaptation of one of the most spell-binding stories in the Professor Shonku series called Nakur Babu O El Dorado.

Shooting of the film begins early next year, and the film is likely to release by the end of 2018. Veteran actor Dhritiman Chatterjee will play the lead role of Professor Trilokeshwar Shonku (his full name), an eccentric inventor who lived in Giridih with his servant Prahlad and cat Newton. Subhashis Mukherjee will play Nakur Babu. The title of the film is – Professor Shonkhu o El Dorado.

As the popular Nakur Babu tale is set to morph into a movie for the first time, SVF co-founder and Director Shrikant Mohta announced, "We are elated to make a film on Professor Shonku, who, over the years, has delighted and captivated fans of all ages, especially children and teenagers, through a series of science stories that have defied beliefs. The stories written by the great Satyajit Ray, will come alive at the hands of gifted director Sandip Ray, and we at SVF will ensure that the first Professor Shonku film sets new standards for the creative and technical excellence that are the hallmarks of all our content."

Director Sandip Ray said, "I have always wanted to make a film on Professor Shonku. Such a character is unparalleled in our science fiction. Books, with the written word, are like the theatre of the mind, and every reader conjures his or her own picture of their favourite character. In that sense, therefore, it will be an interesting challenge to take the fictional character of Professor Shonku, the highly talented inventor with quirky manners and who was way ahead of his time, and to bring him convincingly to life on celluloid. I am looking forward to doing this with the veteran actor Dhritiman Chatterjee and the commitment of SVF by my side."

Mahendra Soni, SVF co-founder and Director, said, "It is a great honour for us at SVF to be able to do a film on Professor Shonku, who has been close to the hearts of millions of lovers of Bengali fiction for years now. We are certain that audience will enjoy watching this incredible scientist.''

Writer and maker of the detective Feluda series, Satyajit Ray has modelled Professor Shonku on Professor Challenger (of the Arthur Conan Doyle books) and Hesoram Hushiar, a character of Sukumar Ray, writer and father of Satyajit Ray. Son of Dr Tripureshwar Shonku, Trilokeshwar Shonku was a precocious child who passed matriculation when he was barely 12, and B.Sc. with honours in physics and chemistry at merely 16 years of age. A polyglot with knowledge of 69 languages, he became a professor at Kolkata's Scottish Church

College at the young age of 20.