Titas Chowdhury (HINDUSTAN TIMES; November 6, 2019)

Bypass Road is a rather special film for Neil Nitin Mukesh as the thriller marks his debut as a producer and screenplay writer. He says, “I had great fun. I’ve never felt this kind of a high before. It gave me such creative satisfaction.”

But moments later, the actor adds that the picture wasn’t as rosy as many would think. Neil explains, “I can’t take credit for the production all by myself. Many creative brains came together and wanted to spearhead the process in a certain direction as filmmaking is not a one man’s job. But everyone looked at me for those nods of approval and that would stress me out.”

He goes on to share that the dearth of unique scripts led him to pen Bypass Road four years ago. “I started developing the film when I was just about finishing Prem Ratan Dhan Payo (2015). I had gone to Dubai for one of my shows and on my way back, on the flight, I somewhere read that OTT platforms are going to come to India soon. I knew that it was the need of the hour to start developing the script. As an actor, how long can I wait for a subject to be developed? I knew I could do much more than what I was being offered,” he says.

For Neil, Bypass Road is a trendsetter as it will introduce the Hindi cinema-watching audience to a new sub-genre of thrillers. “There’s a genre in the subtext of thrillers called home invasion. In the West, you’ll see a lot of home invasion films, such as Scream (1996), Hush and Don’t Breathe (both 2016), which have a thin storyline and come straight to the plot. I thought that it would startle my audience here but I still wanted to introduce that genre to them where they would wonder if the protagonist is going to survive or not and what is the survival instinct of a paraplegic in his own house,” says the New York (2009) actor.

Neil intends to push the envelope for himself and venture into a new territory. Hinting at his upcoming plans, he shares, “In the near future, I’ll most likely direct a thriller. I’m also very fond of love stories. Once I feel it’s the right time to jump into that aspect of filmmaking, I won’t wait.”