Avinash Lohana (MUMBAI MIRROR; November 23, 2017)

After collaborating on the sequel of the 2013 anthology, Bombay Talkies, the tentatively titled Love and Lust, with four approximately 30-minute fi lms being directed by Karan Johar, Dibakar Banerjee, Zoya Akhtar and Anurag Kashyap, Ronnie Screwvala and Ashi Dua are set to co-produce the screen adaptation of Indian- American author Karan Bajaj’s 2010 novel, Johnny Gone Down.

Reportedly, ad filmmaker Karan Kapadia, the husband of Nitya Mehra who directed the Katrina Kaif and Sidharth Malhotra-starrer Baar Baar Dekho, will be at the helm. Johnny Gone Down revolves around Nikhil Arya, once an Ivy League scholar with a promising future at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) till an innocent vacation turns into an intercontinental journey that sees him become a genocide survivor, a Buddhist monk, a drug lord, a homeless accountant, a software mogul and a deadly game fighter.

Twenty years later, Nikhil aka Johnny, now forty, is broke, homeless, and minutes away from blowing his brains out in a diabolical modern-day joust, tired of running. With the Colombian mafia on his trail and his abandoned wife and son 10 thousand miles away, he prepares for his final act, aware that he will have lost even if he wins. “The script is currently been written and the film will roll next year,” informs a source close to the development.

Confirming the news, author Karan Bajaj told Mirror, “Yes, Ronnie Screwvala had bought the book rights and Ashi Dua has been involved in the project from the start. They’re best positioned to know what stage the film is in. Johnny Gone Down always had a cult following and many readers have been very touched by it so I’m happy people like Ronnie and Ashi whose creative work is deeply empathetic, are at the helm of it.”