Abhijat Joshi

Biography

National Award-winning screenwriter and academic Abhijat Joshi is best known for his association with Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Rajkumar Hirani, with whom he has penned some of the biggest and critically acclaimed Bollywood blockbusters since the turn of the millennium: Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006), 3 Idiots (2009) and PK (2014) to name a few.

 He started out in theatre, and eventually forayed into cinema when writer-director Vidhu Vinod Chopra expressed interest in creative collaboration after seeing a production of his celebrated play `A Shaft of Sunlight`.

Subsequently, Abhijat debuted as a screenwriter with the romance drama Kareeb (1998), which was directed by Chopra and starred Bobby Deol and Shabana Raza in the lead roles. In 2007, Abhijat won the National Film Award for Best Screenplay for the comedy-drama Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006), which he co-wrote with Chopra and Hirani. 

The winning streak continued with the Aamir Khan starrer 3 Idiots in 2009: besides going on to become one of the highest-grossing Indian films ever, the comedy-drama won several prestigious national and international awards and was subsequently remade into Tamil and Spanish.

The action drama Mission Kashmir (2000), the mystery drama Eklavya: The Royal Guard (2007), and the Hollywood mystery thriller Broken Horses (2015) are among Abhijat`s other significant writing credits. 

Notable film credits in recent times include the crime thriller Wazir (2016) and the biographical drama Sanju (2018), the latter of which is based on the life of actor Sanjay Dutt, and stars Ranbir Kapoor in the lead role. He then wrote the critically acclaimed movie Shikara (2020).