Neeraj Pandey (born 17 December 1973) is an Indian film director, producer and screenwriter who works in Hindi cinema. Pandey was made his directoral debut in A Wednesday!, which was largely praised by critics and which later became a recipient of many accolades. His second film was Special 26 (2013), which was followed by Baby (2015), the latter of which received critical acclaim and became a huge commercial success. He served as a producer in Rustom (2016). Pandey returned to directing in 2016 helming the biopic movie M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story based on Indian cricketer M.S.Dhoni which fared well critically and commercially. Besides being a filmmaker, Pandey is also a writer and has written a novel named Ghalib Danger in 2013. In 2016, his production house Friday Filmworks entered into a joint venture with Reliance Entertainment and formed Plan C Studios. He has also directed a Web Short 'Ouch' with Manoj Bajpayee and Pooja Chopra which is nominated for Filmfare Short Film Award 2017. He was the co-producer of the film Toilet- Ek Prem Katha. His next release was Aiyaary which starred Sidharth Malhotra and Manoj Bajpayee and was both critically and commercially unsuccessful, becoming his first failed venture. In March 2020, Neeraj Pandey presented and directed his first web series Special Ops on Hotstar. The eight episode series, the first production of Friday Storytellers, the digital arm of Friday Filmworks, was extremely well received by the critics. He is currently working on his next feature film Chanakya. Early life and education Pandey was born and brought up in Howrah, West Bengal. His father, who originally came from Arrah, Bihar and worked for Bosch in Calcutta. He did his schooling from St. Aloysius High School, Howrah (till Class X) and then St. Thomas' High School, Dasnagar, Howrah (Class XI and XII). Pandey moved to New Delhi, where he graduated in English from Sri Aurobindo college(University of Delhi) Career Pandey started his career working with Delhi-based 'Legacy Entertainment', a company started by the Dalmia Group to make television programs. In 2000, he moved to Mumbai, where a friend got a grant to produce a documentary, and offered him the project.[3] Soon he started making documentaries and ad films. Thereafter, he formed a production company 'Quarter Inch Productions', along with his colleague Shital Bhatia which specialized in making television programmes, ad films and documentaries. In 2008, Neeraj and Shital Bhatia formed