When Sushant Singh Rajput’s Detective Saga With YRF Couldn’t Turn Into A Franchise

Today, Rajit Kapur’s Byomkesh Bakshi is back on television, owing to lockdown. The detective season had made waves when it was telecast first on Doordarshan in the early 90s. While the series resulted in countless fans over the decades, producer-director Dibakar Banerjee decided to make a feature film franchise around the legendary character. He took the idea to Aditya Chopra, head honcho of Yash Raj Films and this is what gave birth to Detective Byomkesh Bakshy. Sushant Singh Rajput, who was signed up by the production house, was roped in to play the central protagonist and the first instalment was launched with much hype.

3rd April 2015 – It was exactly five years back that the film hit the screens. This was also the last that one heard of the franchise in the making as the film flopped. An expensive film, given the period nature and World War setting, there was a lot that was spent in getting the props, locations and vintage feel right. There was no compromise whatsoever from the technical standpoint as everything from cinematography to sound design to background score was super impressive. However, the execution worked only in bits and pieces.

While the first half of the film went into setting the base, it was the second half that proved to be more impressive. In fact by the time the film reached the climax, it did peak well. However, not many were left impressed by the overall narrative as it ranged from being exciting to boring. Result? After a fair opening number of 4.20 crores and some growth over the weekend (14.06 crores), the film just about managed to double the score in its lifetime run and concluded at 27.05 crores. This was much lesser than the film’s budget of around 35 crores and since there isn’t much popularity that it has gained on satellite either, Detective Byomkesh Bakshy has been unfortunately largely forgotten.

Incidentally, this is also the last association between Sushant Singh Rajput and Yash Raj Films so far.

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