Blackmail (stylised as Blackमेल)[3] is a 2018 Indian Hindi-language black comedy film co-produced and directed by Abhinay Deo.

The film stars Irrfan Khan, Kirti Kulhari, Arunoday Singh and Divya Dutta in lead roles and is produced by Bhushan Kumar, Krishan Kumar, Apurba Sengupta and Rohit KaduDeshmukh under the banner of T-Series Films and RDP Motion Pictures.

[4] The film had its theatrical release in India on 6 April 2018 and turned out to be a Sleeper Hit at the box office.

Dev Kaushal (Irrfan Khan) is a toilet paper sales executive who is leading a dispirited life professionally and personally.

Anand, who has a crush on Prabha Ghatpandey (Anuja Sathe), a colleague, takes her on a date and reveals Dev's plans.

Ranjit listens to Reena's advice and hires a detective, Chawla (Gajraj Rao) to catch the blackmailer.

[15][16] In January 2015, it was reported that Rakesh Roshan would be producing Abhinay Deo's next film which would have Irrfan Khan and Aditi Rao Hydari as the lead actors playing husband and wife.

Kunal Kapoor, Kunaal Roy Kapur and Vijay Raaz were also signed on to be a part of the project and the shooting was supposed to begin at the end of February.

[17][18] In June 2015, it was reported that Rakesh Roshan had dropped the project that he was doing with Abhinay Deo citing creative differences.

[19][20] One year later in August 2016, Abhinay Deo said that after he completed the work on Force 2, he planned to revive the film that he was supposed to do with Irrfan Khan before it was shelved.

[27][28] After the special screening for Amitabh Bachchan on 31 March 2018, the makers organized another special screening on 2 April 2018 in the absence of lead actor Irrfan Khan (who was undergoing treatment for a neuroendocrine tumor in the UK) for contemporary Bollywood film directors, which was attended by Rajkumar Hirani, Amol Gupte, Nishikant Kamat, Ashutosh Gowarikar, Tanuja Chandra, Meghna Gulzar, Ravi Udyawar, Rensil D'Silva, Sudhir Mishra, Sriram Raghavan, Soumik Sen, Pradeep Sarkar, Mukesh Chhabra and others, to a positive response.

"[32] Sweta Kausal of Hindustan Times gave the film a rating of 3 out of 5 and said that Blackmail is a "Fun filled and realistic story-telling made interesting with engaging and hilarious performances of Irrfan Khan and Divya Dutta".

[33] Rachit Gupta of The Times of India gave the film a rating of 4 out of 5 saying that, "The plot of Blackmail is its hero and it manages to strike a good balance between dark and funny.

"[34] Raja Sen of NDTV gave the film a rating of 1.5 out of 5 and said that, "Irrfan is incapable of giving a bad performance but Abhinay Deo's farce is too tacky and poorly-conceived to do Khan justice".

[35] Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express gave the film a rating of 2 out of 5 and said that, "The Irrfan Khan starrer begins promisingly but descends pretty quickly into flatness and sluggishness, a classic problem of not knowing quite how to play out a perky idea.