Karan Johar to develop "Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna" into long-form series

Karan Johar recently revealed that he is taking his controversial film “Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna” to the small screen, 20 years after its release.

The filmmaker, who spoke to The Week recently, said that he planned to adapt the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer into a long-form series so that the story and its characters have more space to develop. However, Karan said that he isn’t in a position to elaborate more on the project, which will be for a streaming platform.

At the same time, Karan acknowledged that the movie was polarising when it was released back in 2006.

“I had many people come up to me and ask me whether I was unwell after that film, because they said, ‘How can you endorse infidelity?’ And I was like, ‘How can you endorse something that’s already so sold out’?” he said.

He stated that an incident where a couple in the audience left the theatre after realising that two of the characters were checking into a hotel room made him realise how divided audiences can be.

“People judge what happens in their homes, they forget it, they brush it under the carpet, but they don’t want to watch it on celluloid, even though it’s probably a reality in their own home,” he said.

The original, which he wrote with Shibani Bathija, co-stars Rani Mukerji, Preity Zinta, Amitabh and Abhishek Bachchan, follows Dev and Maya, two individuals in unhappy marriages who form a deep emotional connection that develops into an extramarital affair, challenging conventional ideas of love and commitment.