Vicky Kaushal is all set to make his entry into the horror genre with Bhanu Pratap Singh’s Bhoot – Part One: The Haunted Ship. In the film, he will be seen as the surveying officer of Seabird, an unmanned ship which washes ashore in Mumbai. As he tries to investigate what actually happened in the ship, an evil spirit wreaks havoc on him.

Bhoot – Part One: The Haunted Ship is said to be inspired by MV Wisdom, the 9,000-tonne cargo ship that was found stranded on Juhu Beach in June 2011. In an interview with Bollywood Hungama, Vicky confirmed that the incident was the “germ” for the film.

“When MV Wisdom sailed into Juhu Beach in 2011, Bhanu was the guy who was standing in a rickshaw and he was very intrigued by what was there and he went on the beach to click pictures. I didn’t go to Juhu Beach but obviously, it is an open area, so while travelling or going across, I had seen the ship and I knew what it was. I had read it in the papers also,” he said.

 

MV Wisdom ran aground just off Juhu on June 17, 2011. The vessel was under tow from Colombo to Alang (Gujarat) when the towline broke and it got stranded on Juhu Beach, where it remained for around three weeks until it was finally towed away on July 2.

 

Just a little over a month later, on the evening of July 30, an unmanned oil tanker named MT Pavit drift undetected into India’s coastal waters before wedging itself at Juhu Beach. The vessel, with a Panama flag, was abandoned off the coast of Oman earlier that month and an Indian merchant vessel MV Jag Pushpa rescued its crew after receiving an SOS message.

Despite the 77-foot-tall MT Pavit passing numerous merchant liners and navies operating in the Arabian Sea, it went unnoticed. The Indian Navy, the Coast Guard and the Mumbai Police’s coastal arm could not detect the ship until it washed up on the shore of Juhu Beach, and the incident exposed a major lapse in the country’s maritime security.

Bhoot – Part One: The Haunted Ship is loosely inspired by these two incidents, with a “haunted” angle added. The film, which also stars Bhumi Pednekar and Ashutosh Rana, will hit the theatres this Friday (February 21).