Vir Das announces his next feature – Happy Patel, takes a cue from Austin Powers!

Vir Das in 2017 announced his foray into producing and writing content. His first Hasmukh is a co-production with Nikkhil Advani which has Vir playing a full-fledged dark character for the first time on screen. Now another interesting project, which has been written by Vir will be going on floors next year. The film is titled Happy Patel and is currently under the works, with Vir prepping the play the lead in the film.

However, what’s interesting about the film is that Vir has drawn massive inspiration for the film from international hit comedic spy series, Austin Powers. Directed by Jay Roach and starring Mike Myers, is a global hit franchise from late 90s early 2000s which became a global hit across the three films which were made under it. Vir is inspired to create such a spy character and says Happy Patel is inspired by that with a whole of comedy, action, drama packed into one big project.

Speaking about it, Vir said, “1. A spy film, with a pinch of comic touch, is something very common in the west (Rush Hour, Shanghai Nights, Bad Boys, Austin Power) but not many films on these lines are made in India. How excited are you to venture in this space?

I feel Indian cinema is only scraping their surface now of what’s to come. 2018 has been an amazing year for content. People are now experimenting with great stories, new genres. Take for example horror comedy didn’t exist for so long, then Stree came and it worked so well. Similarly, when I did Go Goa Gone, Zombies weren’t a thing, but the film worked. So yes now with this current scenario, it’s the perfect time to head into this space and spy films and spy comedies are very exciting for me. Austin Powers is an iconic film and it gave me the base inspiration to work on something that’s inspired from it, but it’s a completely different story. We will begin production for Happy Patel in 2019. I’m currently wrapping up my international commitments and then we begin the pre-production for Happy Patel”.

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