In 2017, filmmaker Amar Kaushik was working on a thriller film titled Chor Nikal Ke Bhaaga with John Abraham and Rajkummar Rao playing the lead. It was supposed to mark the directorial debut of Kaushik who had earlier assisted Raj Kumar Gupta on Aamir (2008) and No One Killed Jessica (2011), and Majid Majidi on his first Hindi film, Beyond The Clouds (2017). However, the project couldn't take off after John backed out of it citing creative differences. The film was later shelved after its producers Prerna Arora and Arjun N Kapoor also walked out. Amar Kaushik also got busy with his other project and made his spectacular debut as a director with the horror-comedy Stree in 2018.
Now, four years later Amar Kaushik is getting back to his debut project. Peepingmoon.com has exclusively learned that the filmmaker is reviving Chor Nikal Ke Bhaaga with a different cast and team. Sources have informed us that Yami Gautam and Sunny Kaushal have been locked in to play the lead in this reanimated version of the film that has been written by Siraj Ahmed who recently wrote Srijit Mukherji's short film in Netflix anthology Ray starring Ali Fazal and Shweta Basu Prasad. Ahmed is said to have tweaked the earlier written material to make it fresh in today's time.
While Chor Nikal Ke Bhaaga is set to get revived, Amar Kaushik will not be directing it anymore. We have learnt that Kaushik will only serve as a creative producer on this film while the directorial duty has been given to Ajay Singh, better known as Ajax, who's earlier helmed the Amazon Prime Horror Comedy series Shaitaan Haveli (2018). Kaushik is collaborating with his favourite producer Dinesh Vijan of Maddock Films to back this thriller based on a diamond heist. They have finalized the cast and crew and will begin shooting sometime next month.
Interestingly, Chor Nikal Ke Bhaaga will be the second 'revived project' for both Yami Gautam and Sunny Kaushal. Yami has already committed to her husband Aditya Dhar's Raat Baaki which is finally being made after five years while Sunny has signed Navdeep Singh's long-in-the-making Kaneda that will go on floors once the travel restrictions for India are lifted in Canada. On the work front, both Yami and Sunny have multiple films in the pipeline. The recently married Yami is currently in Kolkata shooting for Pink director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury's Lost, and will then resume Ronnie Screwvala's A Thursday that has a few days of work left. Sunny, on the other hand, will complete the filming of Janhvi Kapoor's Mili before he dives his full attention to Chor Nikal Ke Bhaaga. He's also signed Aanand L Rai's Nakhrewali which is expected to get off the ground later this year.