EXCLUSIVE: Ajit Andhare shares EXCITING details on Hrithik Roshan-Deepika Padukone’s Fighter, Taapsee Pannu’s Shabaash Mithu, deal with Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions (Part 2)

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The first part of our exclusive interview with Viacom18 Studios COO Ajit Andhare focused on the studio’s illustrious ten-year journey and their immediate release, Laal Singh Chaddha, starring Aamir Khan. In this second and final part, Ajit Andhare shares interesting details on Hrithik Roshan-Deepika Padukone starrer Fighter, Taapsee Pannu-starrer Shabaash Mithu and the much-talked about deal with Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions

Viacom18 Studios is also on board for Fighter, starring Hrithik Roshan and Deepika Padukone, and directed by Siddharth Anand. What can one expect from this film?
It’s our endeavour to try and make a film that can stand up to Top Gun (1986) from India. We haven’t seen cutting edge aerial action in our cinema. Again, it fits in our mantra of ‘redefining Indian cinema’. With Fighter, we want to deliver a benchmark aerial action film with a leading man who can look into the eyes of Tom Cruise and make a statement! That was my motivation. And I have been looking for an aviation movie script for a long time. Anku Pande and Ramon Chibb had discussed this script with us a long time back. Later, it landed up with Hrithik Roshan and Siddharth Anand. That’s the best thing that could have happened because both of them bond well. Also, Siddharth is great with action. So, when we learnt that Hrithik and Deepika are on board and Siddharth is helming the film, that’s when I got excited and reached out to them.

The fact that it brings Hrithik Roshan and Deepika Padukone for the first time has enhanced the buzz for the film…
Oh yes, it’s the first ever casting of Hrithik and Deepika that too in an aviation film. There are many firsts in this film, which is why Viacom18 has been keen to do a film like this for many years now.

Recently, Viacom18 Studios was in the news when it was announced that it has got into a deal with Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions…
It is a strategic alliance with Dharma. We are also looking at building a maker ecosystem. This is the reason we have worked with some prolific filmmakers and now we have decided to ally with Karan Johar. Working with such filmmakers can help us scale the business to the next level. We are collaborating with Dharma on several films which are currently in the works and many are also on the drawing board right now. So, hopefully, we’ll be able to develop this into something more meaningful.

After Maharashtra decided to open cinemas, a lot of filmmakers announced the release dates of their films. However, Viacom18 hasn’t announced the release dates of any of the Dharma films. Why is that and do you have a plan in place to make the much-awaited announcement?
There’s a plan which is evolving. Both Karan and I have been discussing the release dates. The release dates of many films have been announced, including some of our films from Bollywood and Hollywood. I’d like a few things to settle down before we reveal our plan. We want to know the extent of the occupancy in theatres. The good thing is that we’ll get a rear-view vision by the time we put our films out. So with that information in hand, we’ll be able to take certain calls.

Do you mean to say that you want to see how Sooryavanshi and the subsequent films perform at the box office before announcing the release dates?
I think it’ll be good to have some information on how things are playing out and then ideally, slot these films.

After Bhaag Milkha Bhaag (2013) and Mary Kom, Viacom18 is now making another sports film, Shabaash Mithu, starring Taapsee Pannu. Could you tell what motivated you to tell the story of Mithali Raj on celluloid?
As you know by now, there’s a feminist core when it comes to Viacom18. That’s why we have backed films like Queen (2014), Mary Kom (2014), Margarita With A Straw (2015) etc. My motivation behind doing this film was that I realized that there exists an irony – there’s no attention on women’s cricket in a cricket-crazy country like ours. Hence, I decided that we should tell this story as nobody has heard it. And I felt that the right way is to tell it through the life story of Mithali Raj who’s the most prolific women cricketer this country has seen. This is a film that has been conceived within the studio. We have written it ourselves in-house with no external writers.

Rahul Dholakia was supposed to direct Shabaash Mithu. But he had to leave the film and Srijit Mukherji took over. Interestingly, this process was very smoothly managed…
Rahul Dholakia directed initially for a few days. But the whole problem happened due to the Covid situation. The dates of Rahul and Taapsee were not able to match. Since this film belongs to the studio and is not an external venture, we are completely in control of it. It was a very smooth transition. We had worked with Srijit Mukherji in the past, and recently he filmed a story in Ray. He is not just a cricket enthusiast but also an IPL commentator. He understands the game very well. Therefore, it was just the question of picking a phone and getting him on board. We had discussed a few cricket films also with Srijit before Shabaash Mithu. Rahul also understood as his dates were not free subsequently. Rahul is a great guy and everybody is a well-wisher. So, there was no trouble as such. Of course, it wasn’t ideal as we had done so much hard work. Nevertheless, I was there at the location yesterday and it seems like it’s shaping up very well. Hopefully, we will make the film we have dreamed of!

Which other films of Viacom18 are in the pipeline? What’s the status of the Kalpana Chawla biopic?
There are several films actually in the works. There are several more series as well. It’ll be better to talk about it when we have a little more clarity on these projects. As for the Kalpana Chawla film, we have announced it many years ago. It has been a pet project. We faced certain challenges and they have been overcome. All I can say is that hopefully, we’ll be able to talk about it very soon.

We started the interview by talking about Viacom18’s journey in the last 10 years. Where do you see Viacom18 in the next 10 years?
Unlike other businesses, here you can’t speak too much forward in time when it comes to cinema. For us as a studio, we are focused on the product and its making. We are building an ecosystem that can scale up filmmaking. That will continue and apart from that, we’ll need to respond to some of the new challenges and new opportunities that have come up, especially in distribution. In fact, cinema has been most impacted by the way distribution changes. When cable and satellite television came on board, a new window of monetization had opened. Cinema moved away from theatres at that point and moved into people’s homes. Now, the same is happening with the advent of OTT. Hence, as more and more avenues of distribution open up, monetization improves. It puts the filmmaker in a more comfortable position rather than relying on only one large risky revenue stream. This will mean that you make stories that have never been made before and in areas that are not yet explored in storytelling.

I also believe that we can do a lot more of these large scale films. We can make a lot more films based on history and mythology using very advanced techniques and presenting them in a contemporary manner. That’s what Baahubali managed to do. In the long term, it is about taking Indian cinema forward in areas where it has not yet made an impact. Given that we have a powerhouse of creative talent in the country, we will do more and more interesting cinema.

The other thing is to build more pan-India films. Our cinema tends to get blocked out in pockets whether it is Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, etc. If we can manage a pan-India film, that will be another major milestone. Similarly, we also need to take films onto the global stage. The reason that West succeeds on this front is that their films are far more universal. So the more universal films we can make and the more we appeal to a much wider worldwide audience, the more relevant our cinema will be. But at the same time, we have a cultural context. Cinema is a cultural product. So you can’t simply mimic Hollywood. You have to find your unique voice. So there’s a lot more to be done. Anyway, being around also is a feat. Look at the number of studios that have shut shop. I think the big challenge for a studio is to stay relevant. If a studio stays relevant for 10 years, I think it’s doing well!

Also Read:Ajit Andhare looks back at the ten-year journey of Viacom18; shares his experience of working with Aamir Khan and box office prediction for Laal Singh Chaddha (Part 1)