Haiwaan and the Making of a Producer

By Pickle September 7, 2026

By Pickle News Network

Two films, shot simultaneously, finished simultaneously. For Shailaja Desai Fenn of Thespian Films, 2026 has been an unintended stress test of a business that made commercials until 2024 — and now co-produces Priyadarshan’s Haiwaan with KVN Productions, in theatres on September 11. The first film Balan: The Boy released was released in June 2026

Haiwaan opens worldwide on 11 September, and for Shailaja Desai Fenn the release is a turning point. Thespian Films, a Mumbai talent-and-advertising outfit until two years ago, co-produces Priyadarshan’s 99th film alongside KVN Productions — a Hindi thriller carrying Saif Ali Khan, Akshay Kumar against type, and a Mohanlal cameo. For a producer who grew up on Hindi cinema, putting a film of this scale into theatres is the milestone the rest of the business was always building towards. It is also Thespian’s debut in the top tier of Hindi production.

And it is the first film she never intended to produce.

An ad shoot that became a slate

In 2024, Shailaja Desai Fenn and her husband Satish Fenn, who had run their talent-and-advertising business for years, made a Kalyan Jewellers commercial with Priyadarshan. Conversation drifted to a thriller the director wanted to make in Hindi. They took it to Saif Ali Khan, who agreed at the first meeting.

Then came the moment that changed the company’s business model: Priyadarshan asked them to produce it. He had an appreciation for the emerging producers — especially the “bright boy” Satish Fenn — and believed in their passion for production. Pooja Shah is the associate producer in this co-production venture.

Haiwaan is Priyadarshan’s Hindi reworking of his own 2016 Malayalam hit Oppam, with Saif Ali Khan as a blind man who witnesses a murder and Akshay Kumar, against type, as the predator hunting him. It is the pair’s first film together in 18 years. Mohanlal, who led the original, appears in a cameo.

Akshay Kumar effectively cast himself. He heard about the project on the set of Bhoot Bangla, where Priyadarshan mentioned it in passing, and asked for the part — knowing it was not the protagonist’s role. He had apparently said, “Yeah, I know, so what.”

The financing came from Venkat K. Narayana, the real-estate entrepreneur whose KVN Productions now sits behind some of India’s biggest films. He backed Haiwaan outright. “For stalwarts like these to trust us as first-time producers, that is a big thing,” Desai says.

What a producer actually does

Here is Desai’s take on the job: a producer takes the ship ahead in all weathers, managing egos, tantrums and everyone else’s fear, and answers to the film — not the actor, not the director. If a director wants a name that breaks the budget, the producer finds the money or finds the alternative. Respect does not arrive with the title.

Since January 2024, actors have committed and withdrawn; capital has arrived, walked and occasionally been returned. Roughly seventy per cent of their network advised against the venture. Satish Fenn, she notes, treats a loud no as an accelerant; her job was the engine room — keeping the advertising business trading so salaries were paid while the films were financed.

Told to take a bigger office and look the part, they refused. “Every rupee we spend, we should know where it went. Sitting in a fancy office does not make the film better.” Money has never frightened her, she adds — she has been respectful of it. “Fear makes you freeze. Respect makes you careful.”

A market that keeps rewriting its own rules

Haiwaan lands in a market still adjusting to a single outsized national release earlier this year, Dhurandhar, which reset what a theatrical event is expected to look like and shortened the runway for everything mid-sized.

The counter-evidence has been just as loud. Hanuman Ansh opened on roughly 250 screens for ₹10 lakh on day one, was nearly pulled, then climbed past ₹100 crore as exhibitors added shows to meet demand they had not forecast. Imtiaz Ali’s Main Vaapas Aaunga did the same in reverse order, crossing ₹90 crore worldwide after a weekend the trade had written off.

Shailaja Desai treats both as the operating thesis. “You can’t say this film is doing well, so let’s make a film like that. Audiences are too smart. They sense a good film — call it vibe or buzz — and it will have its due.”

Her own scorecard is different: two films delivered in one year, shot and finished simultaneously and neither planned that way, after Balan: The Boy, which had a market release at Cannes and opened in five languages on 19 June. “You make the film and give it a good release. After that, it is in the hands of the public.”