Filmmaker Nikhil Advani, best known for his espionage thriller D-Day, is now busy curating his next project, titled Batla House. The story is based on an actual encounter that happened almost a decade ago in Delhi, which a lot of people believe to be a conspiracy. There are a lot of speculations about whether the five boys killed in the encounter were really terrorists or not and if the encounter was real at all. Advani hopes to provide answers to these questions in the movie.
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The film is supposed to go on floor in September of this year and Advani reportedly wants to finish the filming within 50 days. The locations decided for the film are Delhi, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mumbai and Nepal. As of now, the cast boasts two big names- first, Saif Ali Khan portraying the character of encounter specialist and Delhi Police officer Mohan Chand Sharma, who led the whole action but was shot dead during the operation, and second, John Abraham, who will play the role of DCP Sanjeev Kumar Yadav, who has been awarded the President Gallantry award a total of eight times.
The original encounter, that the movie is based upon, occurred in September 2008. It was carried out against five terrorists of the Indian Mujahideen in the Batla House, a locality in Delhi’s Jamia Nagar. Two of the terrorist were shot dead while two other accusedwere arrested, and one of the suspects had reportedly fled.
Talking about the movie, Madhu Bhojwani, one of the co-founders of Advani’s production company Emmay Entertainment, said that even though they would not work on a topic that may land them in unnecessary trouble, they would not back out of handling issues of real importance either. Their aim is to choose and develop projects that revolve around relevant issues, but something that can also entertain their audience.
Image Credit: Movie – Lucknow Central, Airlift
Advani had reported in March of this year that they had acquired all the required permissions for the movie. When it comes to tackling real life incidents and portraying them on the silver screen, Advani is no new player in the game. He has done so twice before in his movies Lucknow Central (2017) and Airlift (2016) and is confident on the amount of research that has gone down behind Batla House. According to him, the movie’s team has been researching the incident for four years now and they finally have the NOCs from everybody.
Well, in case of movie adaptations of real life incidents trust Nikhil Advani to find a balance between genuine portrayal and cinematography. His movies are always a perfect balance between documentary like authenticity and a work of entertainment. Now it is only a matter of patient waiting to see what new cards he has up his sleeves this time with Batla House.
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