Neeraj Pandey (born 17 December 1973) is an Indian film director, producer and screenwriter who works in Hindi cinema. Pandey made his directoral debut in A Wednesday! (2008), which was praised by critics and which later became a recipient of many accolades. His next heist drama Special 26 (2013), spy thriller Baby (2015) and biographical drama M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story (2016); all of them were critical and commercial success. He has also written a novel named Ghalib Danger in 2013.

Pandey has directed a Web Short 'Ouch' with Manoj Bajpayee and Pooja Chopra which is nominated for Filmfare Short Film Award 2017. He served co-producer of films Toilet- Ek Prem Katha. In 2019, 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, received well by the critics.

Neeraj Pandey was born and brought up in Howrah, West Bengal. His father is originally from Arrah, Bihar but 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, a constituent of University of New Delhi.

Neeraj 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. 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 a production house named Friday Filmworks, which was the original producer of his debut film, A Wednesday!. The film's script was inspired by the 11 July 2006 Mumbai train bombings.

In 2011, Neeraj Pandey produced the film Taryanche Bait.

After directing his first movie in 2008, Neeraj Pandey directed his second movie Special 26 in 2013, starring Akshay Kumar and Kajal Aggrawal. Neeraj is very fluent in Bengali and also produced a Bengali film, The Royal Bengal Tiger in 2014. In the same year he also produced the film Total Siyappa starring Yami Gautam and Ali Zafar. In 2015, he directed the movie Baby starring Akshay Kumar. In 2016, he produced the film Saat Uchakkey which was a comedy film starring Manoj Bajpayee, Kay Kay Menon, Anupam Kher, Vijay Raaz, Anu Kapoor, Jatin Sarna and Aditi Sharma.

In 2016, Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Entertainment announced a joint venture with Neeraj Pandey and Friday Filmworks to form Plan C studios for production of films. Akshay Kumar starrer Rustom was the first film for the company. It is an equal partnership joint venture between the two.^{[citation needed]}