Horror comedy genre is unexplored in India, says ‘Munjya’ director Aditya Sarpotdar
Filmmaker Aditya Sarpotdar to start shooting vampire comedy with Ayushmann Khurrana and Rashmika Mandanna this year

No big stars, no big promotional campaigns yet director Aditya Sarpotdar’s romantic horror comedy ‘Munjya’ became a surprise hit, earning over Rs 100 crore on a Rs 30 crore budget. He followed it up with ‘Kakuda’ on Zee5 and is now working on a vampire comedy with Ayushmann Khurrana and Rashmika Mandanna. In an interview with Millennium Post, Sarpotdar mentioned that Indian filmmakers have only scratched the surface, tapping into less than 5% of the rich folklore stories the Indian subcontinent has to offer. Excerpts from the conversation:
Congratulations on the success of ‘Munjya’. Films like ‘Munjya’, ‘Laapataa Ladies’ and ‘12th Fail’ proved that good content and with no big star can work wonders at the box office.
This is something that's given so much courage and confidence to the industry also. Like, for us, it's great because it's happened to us. But it also shows that people are looking forward to watching good films. They are okay giving films like ‘Munjya’ a shot when it comes to going to the theatres. In spite of it not having big stars or even, for that matter, big budgets or big marketing campaigns, people have watched ‘Munjya’.
Do you think this has a lot to do with OTT and how it has changed the perception of content, especially with the Indian audiences?
I feel the OTT has given the Indian audience a better insight as to what good content is. In the last 4-5 years, OTT has conditioned us to watch good content and has kind of pushed us towards being selective and watching only good stuff and filtering out things that don't work. Today, people can sense a very average film against an interesting film. Moreover, people also are very smart when they decide which film to watch in the theatres and which on OTT.
In the last few years, a number of big stars and their movies have not done well. Do you think Bollywood is also moving away from the big star norm?
The Hindi film industry will always need big stars to kind of get big numbers and big openings. You cannot function without star power because at the end of the day, the nation that we are of, we do need our actors and stars to drive the sense of the aspiration of cinema. You need that image building. The problem is when you kind of put a big star in a bad film. I need to really see these big stars doing some really great films and backing great content.
Be it ‘Bhool Bhulaaiya’, ‘Stree’, ‘Phonebooth’, ‘Bhediya’, ‘Munjya’ or ‘Kakuda’ – of late, we have seen a deluge of horror romantic comedies.
I think the most surprising factor has been why have we not made enough of these films? Why just a few 10-15 years ago, have we been introduced to the genre when the genre could have been really explored a long time back? And even after ‘Bhool Bhulaaiya’, ‘Bhediya’ or ‘Go Goa Gone’, we have not been consistently making horror comedies the way we should. Films like ‘Munjya’ and ‘Kakuda’ show us that the appetite of the audience to want to watch such movies in India is huge. And we've not been able to cater to it. Even regional cinema has not been exploring horror comedies in their own perspective. I've made back-to-back three films, like I made one in Marathi called ‘Zombivli’. And then I've made two Hindi films – ‘Munjya’ and ‘Kakuda’. My next one is also a horror comedy. This genre is so unexplored. I just hope people make good horror comedies. I also feel that this genre is a perfect genre for families to get a complete theatrical experience. I think it gives you that sense of enjoyment and fear.
But the best thing about ‘Munjya’ was the local mythological flavour. You have also mentioned that the folklore concept in ‘Tumbbad’ and ‘Kantara’ really helped you to pick the genre.
These films definitely have set that benchmark that if you go really local and stay rooted in history and culture, pan-Indian audiences would be interested. We have known people who have wanted to watch folklore. I feel what's going on here is that the audience is connecting predominantly your ghost and spirits and these narratives to small towns, to local India and folklore India.
Like there used to be articles written in Bengal as Brahma Rakshas and here it is used as Munjya. So every culture, even in the South, Munja has got a different name. In every culture where there is a very predominant Brahmin community, they have their own version of this goblin ghost. It's great to see the interest of the Indian audience in Indian culture and folklore. And we have not even tapped even 5% of what the Indian entire subcontinent has to offer in terms of these stories.
Just like the spy universe of YRF, now we have the horror comedy universe.
Maddock Films is highly committed to the horror comedy universe. We, at Maddock, also are really doing our research of finding these interesting stories. You know, if we just devote ourselves to this genre, maybe even our next 50 films will not do justice to the folklore that India has got.
What's your status on the new vampire comedy with Ayushmann Khurrana and Rashmika Mandanna? And when are you starting ‘Munjya 2’?
We will start shooting this year with Ayushmann and Rashmika. We are creating our own mythical version of vampires that comes from Indian mythology. We have found great insights into where our Indian vampires came from. We've locked the dates and we aim to put this film out there by the end of next year. And we plan to start ‘Munjya 2’ immediately after that. With the vampires, we started writing this film the day we finished shooting ‘Munjya’. But with ‘Munjya 2’, we really wanted to see whether ‘Munjya’ does well in the first place. Now that we've seen it, we've started to put our thoughts on paper.