Laxmii

Laxmii is a 2020 Indian Hindi-language horror comedy film written and directed by Raghava Lawrence, marking his directorial debut in the Hindi film industry. A remake of his director's own Tamil film Kanchana (2011), it stars Akshay Kumar, Kiara Advani and Sharad Kelkar, while Ayesha Raza Mishra, Rajesh Sharma and Ashwini Kalsekar play pivotal roles. The film revolves around a man who gets possessed by the ghost of a transgender person. Kumar, also produced the film under his Cape of Good Films and Fox Star Studios, along with Tusshar Kapoor's newly launched production company, Tusshar Entertainment House and Shabinaa Entertainment. Lawrence co-wrote the script along with Farhad Samji, Sparsh Khetarpal, Tasha Bhambra, with Samji adapting the screenplay and dialogues to the Hindi version. The film was announced in January 2019, whilst the principal photography began in April 2019 and ended in March 2020. Laxmii was originally scheduled for a theatrical release on 22 May 2020, but the release was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was later streamed digitally through Disney+ Hotstar on 9 November 2020, across India, thus becoming the first big-budget Bollywood film to release on a streaming platform. It was not released theatrically in India, but it was released in theatres in the United Arab Emirates, Fiji, Australia, and New Zealand. It received mostly negative reviews from critics and the audience, with criticism for the writing, screenplay, narration, editing and performances, although Sharad Kelkar's performance was praised.