The latest to join the list of films going directly for an OTT release is the Vidya Balan starrer Shakuntala Devi, which is based on the life of the eponymous mathematician.
The film will release on Amazon Prime Video on July 31.
The same was announced by the platform on Friday in a short video featuring Vidya Balan. The actor asks viewers the answers to mathematical problems recited one after the other in almost one breath. Then she asks viewers if they know the answer to a rather complicated mathematical equation. And the answer, she reveals, is 31072020 – which, with the right punctuation, is the release date of her film.
Vidya, who was last seen playing a scientist in Mission Mangal, a film on India’s mission to Mars that also starred Akshay Kumar, will play the legendary mathematician in this film directed by Anu Menon.
Shakuntala Devi is produced by Sony Pictures Network Productions and Vikram Malhotra.
The teaser of the film was released in September last year and showed Vidya Balan’s first look as Shakuntala, dressed in a bright red saree and sporting a short hairdo. In the teaser’s background, Vidya’s voiceover said, “The world called her many things, but we know her by the name of Shakuntala Devi.”
Shakuntala Devi was born in Bengaluru and came to be known as the ‘human calculator’. She demonstrated unique abilities to memorise and solve complex arithmetic calculations mentally, without needing to write them down. Her father, a circus artist, took her on a world tour when he discovered her extraordinary abilities.
Shakuntala entered the Guinness Book of Records in 1982 when she mentally computed the multiplication of two randomly picked 13-digit numbers. She was also an author and in 1977, wrote The World of Homosexuals, which was the first study on homosexuality in India. She passed away in 2013 after a prolonged illness.