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Kabir Khan Plans Epic Love Story after Ek Tha Tiger
Kabir Khan the million dollar director and most importantly director of Box Office Smashing Hit Ek Tha Tiger is planning an epic love story set in Burma with time spanning decades. He in an interview to a leading film magazine has mentioned about his plan. Here is the full detail interview on his next, on his lucky charm Katrina Kaif and on box office king Salman Khan.
The filmmaker, still riding the 'Tiger' wave, admits he plans to use information from his documentary, The Forgotten Army, for an epic love story set in Burma during the time of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose - definitely a hundred crore plus project. He wishes to produce films for his documentary filmmaker friends to save them from the grief he went through early on in his career as a filmmaker. Director Kabir Khan speaks straight from the heart about all that matters to him. For the first two weeks after the film released, he didn't involve himself with anything except going back to his production office, and finding out how much it had fetched. In less than seven days, his third directorial venture set a thunderous record for Bollywood, which would take another equally or more potent commercial firecracker to break. Ek Tha Tiger's director Kabir Khan has now moved on from his Eid blockbuster to his next, expected to be an epic love story spanning decades. |
| If buzz is to be believed, the filmmaker plans to use one of his earlier documentaries as the raw material. Bring this up and Kabir beams, "It should be a saga, something that's on the lines of Gone With The Wind, spanning decades. I'm still ideating. I've just started approaching actors. I can speak in detail only after I've finalised the names and sealed the script." But wasn't he planning to turn his documentary, The Forgotten Army, into a movie after Ek Tha Tiger? "It's my most ambitious project by far," he smiles, hinting that we've hit the nail right in the head. "It has a contemporary and past track, based on the Azad Hind Sena. Which means Subhash Chandra Bose's army becomes the context of my movie. It's a story waiting to be told. It's unheard kind of stuff. I know about it because I've made the documentary. It was called The Forgotten Army because no one seems to know what happened to it, it's forgotten by history. The film will require a lot of work and also huge finances. Its canvas will be mammoth, set in Burma." The Forgotten Army is a 105-minute TV documentary, first aired in 1999. It traces the famous march of the Indian National Army from Singapore to Imphal. The journey of the film started by chance in 1994 on the sets of the documentary Beyond The Himalayas, which followed the Great Silk Route from Bukhara, through China, to Mongolia. Initial research didn't bear results for Kabir because there was little available in history or literature textbooks on the INA. Even Netaji Research Bureau in Kolkata, then run by Dr Shishir Bose, Netaji's nephew, didn't help much. Kabir then met the survivors of the INA, Colonel Lakshmi Sehgal, who passed away recently, and Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon. The latter was one of the three tried by the British in the famous Red Fort trial in 1946. The other two were Shah Nawaz Khan and Prem Kumar Sehgal. The documentary, the filmmaker insists, wasn't about Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, although he was mentioned in the film. It was the story of the INA, from inception to its march through Burma. Back in 1996, his became the first crew ever to be allowed in the country for shooting purposes. When his team and he shot the film in 1996-1997, they realised that Burma was in a time warp. There were moments when the Colonels saw a hut or a road and recalled having seen it back in the day. A newspaper had stated that Kabir's next was likely to be a youth drama set in Delhi University, for which he was planning to cast newbies. Reportedly, he was also working on a project that features Hrithik Roshan in the lead and would be produced by Sajid Nadiadwala. So what happens to The Forgotten Army? Table this, and the father of two points out that there are far too many speculations around what his next is likely to be. "There were lots of names mentioned in the newspapers. Frankly, I haven't even started approaching producers. The Forgotten Army is one film I'm sure I will make. I'm still trying to figure life with the rest of my ideas, because I don't want the baggage of anticipation to hit me so early on, before my fourth film. I've made the smallest and biggest budget films. That should now liberate me to try something which is bigger or smaller without any extra thoughts," says Kabir, adding that the film on Delhi University is just an idea in his head, which if and when he explores, will show the real side of the university and the student life there. Does he plan to incorporate a character modeled on him in the script? "Why not?" he smiles. Teaming with Katrina Kaif proved to be lucky for the filmmaker twice. New York and Ek Tha Tiger are certified hits. Would he cast her in his next too? "She's a darling and if a role suits her, I'll sign her with my eyes closed. But I don't want to kill a project by over-casting. She's a star and if a story doesn't need a star, then I shouldn't ideally cast them," Kabir reasons. Stories have been making rounds about his tiffs with his Tiger, Salman Khan. It's said that he was tired of his interference on the sets. He hated it when Salman beat Katrina with a stick, and couldn't handle their constant fights. Is he still open to the idea of working with the box office's King Midas? "I can always work with Salman because he doesn't interfere. His ideas enhance the script. If an actor doesn't bring anything other than his face to the film, then I'd be forced to think that either he's daft or he's disinterested. Salman is neither," he argues, stating that if there were issues, he wouldn't have finished a 110-day schedule and returned to India in time. "Our film would have released on Christmas, maybe. As for the reported fights between Katrina and him, I'd just say it's a fabulous work of imagination by someone who is out of work otherwise. I was misquoted by the tabloid, and it did create some sort of awkwardness between Salman and me. But Salman knows the media better than I do; so he laughed it off after reading the story." After a huge hit at the box office, doesn't he plan to extend his contract with YRF? The three-film-old director doesn't deny the possibility of another project with the production house, but says, "There's nothing confirmed yet. We have a fantastic working relation which doesn't end if I work with someone else on my next." As a documentary filmmaker trying to make his foray into commercial cinema, Kabir recollects today that he faced hell. And it was by chance that Aditya Chopra landed a copy of his Kabul Express script and signed him on to direct three films for the company. "I was asked to get a star on board and then the so-called patrons of new wave cinema would consider my script," he recalls. "Today, those same producers call me and express their desire to work with me. I will work with them, but I've learnt something out of this." When prodded, Kabir says, "Once I have enough on my repertoire as a director, and sufficient money in my bank account, I'll put a film together for some of my documentary filmmaker friends. It can be so disillusioning to have a good script and no one ready to finance it. So, I will produce films at some point for younger filmmakers to give them a chance to change the grammar of the industry. Otherwise, we'll never get out of the la-la land movies, ever!" |
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