It’s going to take producer and writer Anshulika Dubey a while to process this good news. Rightly so. It’s not every day that Hollywood filmmaker Richard Linklater throws his weight behind an Indian movie. The filmmaker — known for the Before franchise and Boyhood (2014) — has joined as an executive producer of How to Not Have Sex, a Hindi adaptation of his movie Tape (2001).
A still from ‘How to Not Have Sex’. Pic/PR
Dubey, who has produced the film with Abhiram Deshpande, revealed that she was in touch with playwright Stephen Belber, whose play inspired Tape. “Through Stephen Belber, we went to the team that owned the original film’s rights. That included Richard Linklater and John Sloss,” she told mid-day. She first met Linklater and Sloss in 2020. “One of the reasons they came on board was because like them, we too were making it independently, with the same spirit.”
Anshulika Dubey and Shivam Gupta. Pics/Instagram
Starring Aakash Prabhakar, Nishank Verma, and Amrita Bagchi, How to Not Have Sex examines themes of consent and sex. Dubey was certain about bringing the story to India. “I was struck by how little had changed in 20 years regarding female consent and misogyny. This story needed to be retold for a wider audience, in a society still struggling with a woman’s agency over her own body. The film places accountability where it belongs — on the perpetrator, not the victim. In our movies where we talk about sex and consent, women are asked questions. This movie flips that narrative. It puts the man on the spot.”
Casting director Shivam Gupta, who recently worked on Haq (2025), serves as a co-producer. He said, “We’ve grown up watching Before Sunrise [1995], Boyhood, and many more. [To have Linklater on board] is surreal.”
May 31
When ‘How to Not Have Sex’ will première at the New York Indian Film Festival
What’s ‘Tape’ about?
Pic/Youtube
Starring Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, and Robert Sean Leonard, the film is set over one night when three friends reunite and look back at events of their college days
