Filmmakers Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK said they wanted ‘Citadel: Honey Bunny’ to have a distinct identity from their earlier series ‘The Family Man’ as they felt the need to explore a new style and approach with the spy project.

While ‘The Family Man’, starring Manoj Bajpayee, followed a middle-class man working for a covert government agency, ‘Citadel’ operates in a fictional universe where spy agencies are not tied to governments and handle larger global missions.

“We had to be very different from ‘The Family Man’, we couldn’t do the same things. It was easier to do it, but we thought we should pick a different style for this,” Raj told PTI in an interview.

DK said they knew from the start that ‘Honey Bunny’ needed to stand apart from their previous work.

“‘Citadel’ is a different world. It is not India nor the real world we live in. It is a slightly fictitious universe, where there are spy agencies that are not government agencies, and they are fighting for things larger than protecting the borders,” DK added, according to the PTI report from Mumbai.

“So, that’s the thread we adhered to, and then we started creating these spies. Even in terms of treatment, they are slightly larger-than-life than Srikant Tiwari. So, they are an entirely different breed of spies,” he said.

‘Honey Bunny’ serves as the Indian chapter of ‘Citadel’, which started with an American show headlined by Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Richard Madden.

The Prime Video series, featuring Samantha Ruth Prabhu opposite Varun Dhawan, is billed as a riveting narrative that fuses elements of a gritty spy action thriller with the heartwarming allure of a love story.

“When stuntman Bunny (Dhawan) recruits struggling actress Honey (Prabhu) for a side gig, they are hurled into a high-stakes world of action, espionage, and betrayal. Years later, as their dangerous past catches up, the estranged Honey and Bunny must reunite and fight to protect their young daughter, Nadia,” reads the official plotline.

The idea for ‘Honey Bunny’ came from Sita R Menon, a frequent collaborator of Raj & DK.

The writer, who has worked with the director duo on projects such as ‘99’, ‘Shor in the City’, ‘Go Goa Gone’, as well as shows ‘Farzi’ and ‘Guns & Gulaabs’, said she aimed to ensure “equal weightage” to both Dhawan and Samantha’s characters in the story.Many people on social media found the trailer of ‘Honey Bunny’ to be similar to the Hollywood action-comedy ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’, which featured Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as a spy couple.

When asked about the same, Raj said, “It has nothing to do with ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’ at all. If you know us, we won’t be derivative in any of that.” The filmmaker teased that there are “bigger plans” being enacted in the US for the ‘Citadel’ franchise, which also saw the release of an Italian version titled ‘Citadel: Diana’ earlier this month.

Also featuring Kay Kay Menon, Simran, Saqib Saleem, Sikandar Kher, Soham Majumdar, Shivankit Parihar and Kashvi Majmundar, ‘Citadel: Honey Bunny’ will debut on November 7 on Prime Video.