Photograph is the much awaited next release from Ritesh Batra, and looks sprinkled with the same minimalistic charm of Batra that we have seen in his earlier films like The Lunchbox or Our Souls at Night amongst others. Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Sanya Malhotra ‘play strangers turned couple’ in the film, and seem perfectly cast as ordinary flesh and blood people we could actually meet on the streets. Batra had directed Nawaz brilliantly in their earlier outing together and we hope to see the magic returning. The film choices of Sanya is becoming interesting day by day and should take her along a long way ahead.

Photograph releases on March 15th in India and is a first major theatrical release of Amazon Studios for the region. The film has also been screened at Sundance and Berlinale film festivals to pretty good reviews. We cannot wait.

The AnazAm Prime Web Series Made in Heaven is a creation of Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti and has been directed by a team of Zoya Akhtar, Nitya Mehra, Prashant Nair and Alankrita Srivastava. The cast is extremely promising as well with names like Kalki Koechlin, Shashank Arora, Jim Sarbh, Arjun Mathur, Shobhita Dhulipala and Shivani Raghuvanshi. The show deals with the theme of weddings, relationships and dysfunctional families in the very urban and posh setup, and certainly seems like high pitch entertaining show that uses sarcasm as its primary language.

The show premiers on March 8th. Looking forward.

Badla is Sujoy Ghosh‘s official remake of The Invisible Guest, with genders swapped of the protagonists from the original film. The trailer is intriguing, and given the name and the tagline of the film, it appears that it will be treated more as a thriller than a suspense drama, with the ‘twist’ revealed early and the rest of the film playing out on a more psychological mode to expose human complexities.

Amitabh Bachhan owns the trailer and looks in excellent form after long. I am not sure if the trailer was cut a certain way but Taapsee Pannu seemed to be somewhat low on energy. Amrita Singh‘s quick look is impressive. Overall, we will have to wait to see how Sujoy Ghosh pulls this up, for now the overall trailer is lukewarm.

Badla releases on March 8th, 2019.

Directed by Soumik Sen, Mahalaya is the story of attempting to replace the legendary Birendra Krishna Bhadra with Uttam Kumar, which is still being talked out as the momentous blunder. Not convinced with the hindi voice over of Prosenjit Chatterjee, there are major diction issues there. Jisshu Sengupta is a good pick to play Uttam Kumar, as is  Subhashish Mukherjee for the icon. The film releases on March 1st, and is certainly likely to attract audience because of its subject. Hope the treatment is good as well.