According to The Hollywood Reporter, Reliance MediaWorks has acquired the distribution rights to the culinary comedy Today's Special starring and co-written by The Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi: Reliance MediaWorks nabs 'Today's Special'.
Directed by David Kaplan, the English-language film, written by Mandvi and Jonathan Bines, is based on Mandvi's play "Sakina's Restaurant." The actor plays a sous chef who dreams of opening an upscale Manhattan eatery but is forced to take over his family's tandoori restaurant in the Little India neighborhood of Jackson Heights in Queens.I caught Today's Special earlier this year at Opening Night of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. It's a fun film with a likeable cast, though somewhat predictable and a bit by-the-numbers. You can see for yourself when it comes to theaters this October.
The film was produced by Nimitt Mankad's Inimitable as the company's first feature and Lillian LaSalle's Sweet 180, which also manages Mandvi, who appears onscreen in "The Last Airbender."
The movie also stars Indian film icon Naseeruddin Shah, Jess Weixler, Kevin Corrigan and Dean Winters.
Reliance, which has been making inroads into the U.S. market with such Hindi-language films as "Raavan" and "3 Idiots," will release "Special" nationwide Oct. 8 on the theater track it's been developing to reach Indian-American audiences.