Pilot Script Locked
October
Pilot locked. Season 1 outline and episode beats completed.
HASYA
Karan, a teenage comedian with a traumatic past, moves between the worlds of Brown Suburbia and NYC Standup trying to bridge the gap between the two. How much is he allowed to make fun of a community that he’s deeply influenced by but feels rejected by?
Personal Statement
I was about to perform standup comedy for over 200 people. Normally, I would have been excited, but tonight, for the first time as a stand-up comedian, I was going to confront my fear of standing.
I was an athlete whose defense mechanism had been basketball. Unfortunately it was stripped due to a freak condition that left me with a lifelong limp. In the hospital, as I binge-watched sitcoms and specials, I started putting pen to paper. I wrote relentlessly living out the feelings I was scared of through other characters, relinquishing them.
With standup however, I was defenseless against one fear: standing. My insecurity about my limp caused me to timidly perform from a stool, trademarking myself as the sitdown comedian. While Karan and I share that fear, I am in no way like him. He fights in ways I could never fathom and endures in ways I’m not strong enough to. Hasya is my weapon to face this fear in a different medium. Being able to see Karan overcome through the pages gives me hope, in a way that no other story has.
I believe that great stories aren’t about what happens but who it happens to. We don’t know what it’s like to sell meth like Walter White but we relate to the feeling of deserving more than you have and not wanting to live in regret. Through Walter we can relinquish them. I choose to tell Karan’s story because I am finally ready to relinquish this feeling through another life.
Through comedy I fight again, and through Hasya I enter a new battle, one with myself. With each draft, I prepare for war with my mic as my sword, my jokes as my bullets, and my characters as my army to defeat the enemy within, the one that kept me on the stool for so long. Nobody can stop me from standing anymore, especially myself.
— Sanjay Vattamreddy, Co-Creator · Writer · Lead
Timeline
Casting
Oct – Nov
Casting call (Oct 20), request tapes (Oct 27), callbacks and chemistry reads (Nov 12).
Key Crew Lock
Nov 12
Locked DP, PD, AD, Editor, Composer, and additional producers.
Crowdfunding
Nov 3 – Jan 3
Launch crowdfunding campaign and pitch to partners and community supporters.
Pitching
Dec – Jan
Showrunner & Director pitch to networks in India and US distributors.
Shoot
Jan 5 – 19
Five day shoot across New Jersey and Brooklyn with multi-location schedule.
Editing & Festivals
March Onward
Final cut by May. Targeting Sundance Film Festival (Episodic / Series Program) and additional showcases.
Mood & Tone
Between grounded rawness and heightened spectacle, Hasya is shot like a memory fragment—confrontational, intimate, and occasionally surreal.
Cinematic Core
Comedy clubs glow like fever dreams in saturated spotlight. Family scenes collapse into handheld claustrophobia. School halls pulse with cold fluorescents. Parties unravel into kinetic, borderline surreal sequences.
Freeze frames, journal inserts, and fourth-wall breaks let Sanjay’s interior monologue bleed into the real world, so humor and ache coexist in every frame.
Genre DNA
Eighth Grade earnestness, Atlanta surreal flourishes, and Fleabag confessional wit.
Color & Light
Warm ambers vs. icy blues mirror Karan’s dual worlds; texture shifts between hazy film grain and crisp digital to signal perspective.
Sound & Motion
Jazz percussion underscores anxiety, whip-pans and snap-zooms punctuate punchlines, then fall into stillness for emotional beats.
Director Note
“The tone walks a line between cringe humor and quiet ache, leaning on handheld intimacy.” — Benny Nguyen, Pilot Director
