Neeraj Pandey

Neeraj Pandey (born 17 December 1973) is an Indian film director, producer and screenwriter who works in Hindi cinema. Neeraj Pandey 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), both of them received critical acclaim and became commercial success. He served as a producer in Rustom (2016). Neeraj 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, Neeraj Pandey is also a writer and has written a novel named Ghalib Danger in 2013.

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 2019, Neeraj Pandey launched Friday Storytellers, the digital content division of Friday Filmworks, focused on creating multi-format content for OTT and digital streaming platforms. In March 2020, he directed his first web series Special Ops, which was released on Hotstar. The eight-episode series, the first production of Friday Storytellers, was extremely well received by the critics. He went on to direct and produce several other web series under the same banner, including Special Ops 1.5: The Himmat Story, The Freelancer (TV series), and Special Ops 2, which released on JioHotstar on July 18, 2025.