Shashank Khaitan

Shashank Khaitan is a movie director in Bollywood, India's Hindi-language movie industry, best known for writing and directing Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania, released in 2014.

Khaitan was born in Kolkata and raised in Nashik, Maharashtra in a Marwari business family.

Although he was interested in watching movies since a very young age, he was initially more into sports, playing cricket and tennis tournaments. At the age of 17, he decided to pursue a career in entertainment.

Khaitan joined Whistling Woods International Institute (a film institute started and supported by veteran movie director Subhash Ghai) to break into the movie industry. He credits the institute with giving him the technical background, and also credits the institute's faculty (who work actively in the movie industry) with making him feel comfortable on set by inviting the students to accompany them to set. While at Whistling Woods, Khaitan worked on his first attempted movie, Sherwani Kahaan Hai, with some of his fellow students at Whistling Woods, but the movie was not successfully completed.

In 2008, Khaitan starred as Manohar in Roorkee By-Pass, a 22-minute drama directed by Arundhati Sen Verma, and assisted on the set of Subhash Ghai's Black & White.

Khaitan's initial plan with Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania was to make it a story of two con artists, similar to Bunty Aur Babli. However, as he worked on the script, he found the characters turning out sweeter than he had anticipated and falling in love. Khaitan cites Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ) and Casablanca as inspiration for his script, and the movie pays homage to DDLJ as well as Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.

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