Director Abhishek Sharma declares that it was the conflict between luck and hard work that attracted him most to The Zoya Factor . For Sharma, the theme of superstition at its centre also meant that there was plenty of scope for humour. “Even in a serious film like Parmanu I had light moments,” says Sharma who has previously helmed comedies like Tere Bin Laden , its sequel Tere Bin Laden: Dead or Alive and The Shaukeens . “That is something I can’t hold back… it happens naturally [for] me,” declares Sharma commenting on his love for the genre. “Comedy is a beautiful flavour…because in today’s tense times, people love to laugh,” he asserts.
But The Zoya Factor is not just a comedy. “It is a unique species,” states Sharma, “it can be a genre of its own.” The film embraces within it the sub-genres of romance, social commentary and sports as well. The support of sports coordinator Robert Miller who has worked previously on films like Chak De! India and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag helped significantly with the film’s cricketing aspect. Sharma admits that romance is not his strong suit and since he was attempting it for the first time he worked hard on it. “I watched a lot of [films] and studied how to make a good romcom,” he recalls.
The film’s leads, who are “polar opposites” in the director’s words, helped in the creation of a unique chemistry. “They have different ways of working – Sonam is very spontaneous, she brings a certain freshness to the character; Dulquer is very intense, he goes deep into the character, he has questions,” he shares. While Salmaan worked on his dialogues separately, it was also important to make him look convincing as a cricketer as he is not naturally athletic. Kapoor on the other hand had to be given a more regular look in order to bring her closer to the character in Anuja Chauhan’s novel. “We had to de-glamorise her a bit,” he says.
This is the first of Sharma’s films which has been adapted from a popular literary work. “This screenplay was more difficult than [that of] Parmanu or Tere Bin Laden ,” he recalls. The writing took nearly four years while the making took just one, he says, elaborating on the difficulties of whittling down the popular 500-page book into a two-hour film. The original text had multiple layers which had to be retained with their flavour intact. Moreover, the novel primarily presents the story from the female character’s point of view while in the film the perspective needed to be more balanced so that it was interesting from the central male character’s standpoint as well. Chauhan added more layers to Salmaan’s character and wrote new scenes for the film. Sharma says that while the process may seem easy because of the film’s mainstream look and feel and elements of glamour, romance and cricket, “It is a high concept film”, adding that it was easier to write a niche film like Tere Bin Laden .
Sharma also stresses about how important it was to ensure that despite the changes to the original narrative and its transformation into a screenplay, the soul of the book was maintained. Given that the book was a bestseller and Chauhan a celebrated writer, it had to be taken seriously. His own producers Pooja and Aarti Shetty were great fans of the book as well. “We had to really crack our heads to write a tight screenplay,” he says. About future projects, Sharma says that he would like to work in different genres and has a few films in the pipeline. “It’s very difficult in our industry to know which film will roll well because it is a team effort; you need too many things to go right for a project to come together,” he emphasises.
