Stree 2 is the big blockbuster of the season and a lot of the credit for its success goes to its writer Niren Bhatt. Even as the film, directed by Amar Kaushik and the latest addition in the horror-comedy universe that includes Bhediya and Munjya, shatters box-office records worldwide, its impactful writing is instrumental in Stree 2 being hailed as a pop-culture phenomenon and a genre-bending film. t2 chatted with Bhatt to delve more in to the world of the Rajkummar Rao-Shraddha Kapoor film.

You not only had the ending of Stree as a starting point, there was also the horror-comedy universe that you had to build Stree 2 in. Was there a single idea that you started writing the film with?

Amar (Kaushik, director) and I started off by thinking of the thread we wanted to continue the story of Stree with. At the end of the first film, Stree got what she wanted. She wanted prem (love) and sammaan (respect) and she got both. She gets the redemption she was looking for and she goes away.

We were looking at which point to start Stree 2. You remember the cave in the first film in which Stree’s choti (braid) was cut? In that cave, there are murals that portray Stree’s back story. Stree was a sex worker and she fell in love with a man. When the powerful people of the land came to know about it, they burnt both Stree and her lover. That is she when she became ‘Stree’. In those murals, her lover was portrayed as a headless person. That is where the idea of ‘Sarkata’ came from. The idea that if they had cut the head of her lover, what will happen once she becomes Stree? She comes back to take revenge by cutting their heads off. But what if one of them, the real culprit, is the most powerful man in Chanderi?

Once Stree leaves at the end of the first film, that man comes back to establish his power and extract revenge. That is where we started from and we built on from there, outlining his purpose and his powers. He is trying to negate everything that Stree had done.

When Stree 2 starts, we see that the women of Chanderi are liberated. Girls are studying, they are jogging... they have nothing to fear. Even among kids, the young girls are scaring the boys and the latter are running away. Sarkata wants to change all of that. He wants 200-year-old ideas of patriarchy and subjugation of women to be brought back, the kind of culture he had perhaps lived in. That is where we started and then weaved the whole story.

How difficult is it to walk the tightrope of blending horror and comedy with social commentary?

That is always a tricky tightrope because it will always be skewed in favour of comedy. Horror, by virtue of the genre itself, disturbs most people. Bona fide horror films like The Conjuring and Evil Dead and, very recently, Longlegs and Alien: Romulus have the power to scare the shit out of the audience. That is why only horror fans predominantly go and watch these movies.

With the horror-comedy universe, including the Stree films, our intention is not to do that. We give you a few jump scares but we lean more towards comedy. We try and cater to the family crowd. We want kids to come in. Munjya, for example, is a huge hit with kids. I have been flooded with messages from my friends that their kids are behaving like Munjya! (Laughs) Bhediya is also very popular with kids because they love the animals shown in the film.

We don’t intend to dish out disturbing horror. We only want to give you a few scares, a riveting narrative, along with a lot of laughs.

Writing which aspect of Stree 2 gave you the biggest creative satisfaction?

One of them would be the climax. A lot was happening in the climax. You have the entities coming in, the stakes are constantly rising, there is talk about sacrifice, there is also the story of ‘raktabeej’ woven into it.... We play all of this simultaneously with what is happening in Chanderi where the women of the town break the locks and walk out of their houses with their pooja ki thali. It was challenging to weave all of it together into a coherent and compelling narrative.

I will also pick the sequence where the character played by Akshay Kumar comes in. Also, that whole scene just before interval involving all three friends (Rajkummar Rao’s Vicky, Aparshakti Khurana’s Bittu and Jana, played by Abhishek Banerjee) along with Rudraji (Pankaj Tripathi), which starts from the cave, followed by the bike chase by Sarkata and then all of them reach the mela and try and hide from Sarkata before Shraddha Kapoor’s character makes an entry. That was great fun to write.

How did you hit upon the idea of introducing a character that will potentially take the franchise forward as the villain and cast Akshay Kumar?

We are doing a film called Skyforce with him and Amar went and narrated the character to him. He liked it and wanted to do it. It was as simple as that.

There has been a wee bit of criticism about the idea of bunching together two songs back-to-back and the reveal about Akshay Kumar’s character at the end. Most enjoyed it, some found it gimmicky. Was that always the narrative structure you were looking at?

Once Shraddha’s character disappears, Stree 2 actually ends.

Different films do different things. Sometimes there will be songs, sometimes there will be post-credits, sometimes they will use behind-the-scenes footage and outtakes along with the post-credits. When we started out, we had no intention of putting the songs together, but once the songs were made, it was decided to put them at the end for more impact. I know a substantial chunk of the audience that has liked this format. Some people love the Akshay Kumar scene, some don’t. Many have liked the second half more while others think the first half has more impact. We dished out a whole thali in front of audiences and different people are liking different things.

While it must be exciting to write a film which is part of a larger genre universe, it must also be stressful trying to fit in and piece it all together. Would you agree?

The first thing we do is to get rid of all the pressure! Stree was hugely successful, but as a team we decided that we won’t carry the weight of expectations on our shoulders. We wanted to put it all aside and think afresh. We wanted to set ourselves free to create something that is very dear to us and that is what we did.

Can you pick your favourite scenes in Stree 2?

I like the climax. I wrote about 10 drafts of it. It was very challenging but very enjoyable too. In this film, I have tried to introduce different kinds of humour... there is satire, slapstick, word play, referential humour. We have doffed our hats to Rockstar, and to Rumi, in that dialogue which talks about a field beyond right and wrong.

Humour has always been your strength...

Yes. I started from theatre and I have written a lot of comedies. I have written Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah for many years. I like exploring different facets of comedy in my work.

What made you want to become a screenwriter?

My brother was a college professor and he took me to theatre events and music festivals. I fell in love with theatre as well as the medium of storytelling. I wrote my first play when I was in Class III. I always saw myself as a writer. I wrote plays in college. When I came to Bombay, I wrote for professional theatre in Gujarati and also wrote Gujarati films. I wrote lyrics for songs in Gujarati and then I started writing Hindi films.

A recent piece of screenwriting that made you go ‘wow?’

Oppenheimer. I was always a (Christopher) Nolan fan but I think he reached a different level with Oppenheimer. It is a film which talks about science and is based on the life of a scientist (J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atom bomb) and yet it alienates no one. Audiences across the world have connected with the film for its strong storytelling.