The first draft of 'Kahaani' featured Abhishek Bachchan as Bob Biswas: Sujoy Ghosh

Filmmaker Sujoy Ghosh has revealed that he had approached Abhishek Bachchan for the role of menacing contact killer Bob Biswas while making his acclaimed thriller 'Kahaani', but the actor couldn't do the film due to scheduling issues. The 2012 thriller was headlined by actor Vidya Balan, who played Vidya Bagchi, a pregnant woman searching for her missing husband in Kolkata.

Played by actor Saswata Chatterjee, Bob Biswas - a LIC agent who moonlighted as a cold-blooded contract killer- became the breakout character from the film.

In an interview with PTI, Sujoy said the first draft of the film focused on the characters of Vidya Bagchi and Bob Biswas but later underwent a change as Bachchan couldn't do the film.

"The first draft of 'Kahaani' that I ever wrote was about this pregnant woman coming to Kolkata, looking for her missing husband and she meets this one man at the airport, who takes pity on her and helps her to find her husband.

"But that man was conflicted. He couldn't understand why would someone want to kill this woman- because he was given the contract to kill. So Bagchi and Bob come at the same time."

The director said in his original draft, the film explored the conflict of Bob, who is intrigued why would someone would hire him to kill a helpless, innocent woman.

"Bob helps her to find her husband without understanding why is he doing it. The curiosity, that why would someone want to kill her, gets to him.

"I had given this script to this actor, who was so busy at that time he couldn't do it. Then I thought let's make it about Vidya Bagchi only, keep him out," he added.