Bollywood auteur Vikram Bhatt describes the impetus behind his filmmaking:
Every filmmaker has a genre he’s comfortable with and every filmmaker is a peddler. Karan Johar peddles emotions. Yashraj peddles romance. Priyadrshan and David Dhawan peddle comedy. I peddle fear! And I teach my audience how to fight their fear and come out stronger!
Bhatt’s last film was 1920 — an angry spirits/haunted house/exorcism flick that apparently did rather well despite less than enthusiastic reviews.
Synopsis:
1920 takes place in the pre-independence era and revolves around Arjun and Lisa who are newlyweds. Arjun works as an architect and has been hired to build a hotel where an old mansion is currently placed. To prepare for the reconstruction, the young couple moves into the mansion, but Lisa quickly realizes that something’s wrong. The spirits in the house don’t seem to want them to demolish the old building, but what can they do to prevent it? (Slasherpool.com)
Bhatt is currently in the midst of filming (in London) another horror film, Shaapit, which is due for release in 2010. Though there seems to be little information available on the plot, the poster is at least indicative:
Romance and supernatural threat…
But while fending off the demons, Bhatt has found time to announced that he has two other films going into production. There’s no word on the first except that it’s a “home-grown” one, but the third will be Bollywood’s first-ever “Creature” film — and Jaws and Jurassic Park are quoted as examples of what the “creature” genre offers: films in which the main interest lies with the monster itself. This could mean Big Monster or “natural”-sized monster, though the fact that Bhatt is touting it as the first one ever made in Bollywood, all bets seem to be on the possibility of a Giant Monster film — seeing as Bollywood has made many films with human-sized monsters.
At any rate Bhatt is ambitious. He is quoting the budget at 100 crores (which translates to 1,000,000,000 rupees, I think, or roughly $US20,650,000) — the largest ever for Bollywood — and a big risk as the film will not feature big-name stars.
Though Bhatt won’t reveal anything much about the film, he has said:
Yes, I’m planning to announce something very big. Wait and watch but it’s too early to tell you the details. I’m working on this script for a creature film and yes, I’m meeting up with certain people on the same. But I will make the announcement when everything’s ready. (Glamsham.com)
And he is apparently seeking special effects and technical assistance from “the technical guys who have worked with Spielberg and the like”.
Could be interesting. Once again, we can only wait and see.
Meanwhile, here’s a trailer for Bhatt’s 1920:
Source: Various (as mentioned in text), via Avery
This is VERY interesting news. I’m VERY curious as to what he means by Bollywood’s first ‘creature’ film”?? They’ve had plenty of human-sized creature flicks including the new “Hissss”. Lots of their films are fantasy films feature many different sized creatures in them. If they mean a giant sized creature….well they’ve had a few such as “Shikari” and the obscurities “Gogola” and “Gaj Gauri”. Perhaps as he said a film to where the ‘creature’ is the center point of the story. I would think “Hissss” would fit that bill and as giant-sized “Shikari”?? I also, wonder if it’s not to be a gigantic creature then why would they need such a budget and Hollywood fx guys to do it?? Hmmm….my bet is that it’s to be a good ol’ creature feature such as “Piranha” or “Jaws” but I’m hoping the film’s ‘creature’ will be of the rather large type. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Yes its a real film and I just found out the official fan page of the film. Join the page for latest updates on the film https://www.facebook.com/creature3D