Emraan to play a magician in Ek Thi Daayan

Emraan Hashmi is ready to let the magic begin. And that's meant in quite a literal sense. In Vishal Bhardwaj's Ek Thi Daayan, Emraan plays a magician. And he's not going to leave any stone unturned to ensure he looks convincing performing the magician's tricks.

Going the way of Hrithik Roshan in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Guzaarish, Emraan would be learning magic tricks from one of the foremost magicians of the country before performing them on screen. 


Says our source from the project's core team, "It's very simple, really. Emraan doesn't want trick photography to be used for his magician's part in Ek Thi Daayan. He wants all the magic tricks on screen to look, to BE, real. Vishal Bhardwaj has decided to hire one of India's topmost magicians, whom we won't like to name at the moment, to teach Emraan some really intricate magical tricks." 

Mastering the magical maneuverings would only be part of Emraan's preparations in Ek Thi Daayan. He also needs to probe deep into the psychology of a delusional character. Says our source from the team, "Emraan's character 'sees things'. We don't know till the end if his visions are real or imagined. Emraan has to understand the psyche of a delusional man before he can convincingly play a man who sees things that others can't. It's a tough role." 

Making it tougher is the fact that the film is also about witchcraft. The film has an interesting background. It was a short story written by Aparna Sen's ex-husband, journalist Mukul Sharma. Says our source, "Vishal loved the story and asked Mukul Sharma to develop it into a full-fledged screenplay. The short story became an 80-page novella. And then the screenplay for Ek Thi Daayan." 

Emraan's character of the delusional magician is based on Mukul Shama's own encounter with occultism, a world that Emraan is trying to get familiar with.