Salman Khan on the film he started scripting 20 years ago

By: Indian Express - 4th Dec
IMAGES of Salman Khan in Mel Gibson inspired attire have started doing the rounds. After the huge success of Wanted and the cold response to Main Aur Mrs Khanna and London Dreams, everyone’s curious about the actor’s next big flick, which happens to be a period film. Set in the 19th century, the film is about an imaginary town called Pindhari that is fighting for independence from the British and other Indian rulers.

The bravest of the warriors in Pindhari is none other than Veer, played by Salman Khan. While everyone knows that this story has been penned by Khan himself, not everybody knows that he actually started to write this script 20 years ago. “The film needed to be made on a very large scale and at that time the film budgets were not so large so I just stored the script away,” Khan says. In fact, the script was written before he started acting and he wanted to direct this film, “But people told me to act and not direct, so here I am.”

After digging out and dusting the script two decades later, Khan made minor changes but was still tempted to direct it. “Katrina Kaif convinced me that Anil Sharma would be perfect to direct this script and I too realized that he would be the perfect person. The only thing that scared me was that he’s known to take 200 days to finish shooting,” laughs the actor. So when Khan went to him with the script, Sharma promised to shoot in less than 60 days. (The shoot went on for 140 days.)
Was this the reason that we hear of the numerous fights between the actor and the director during the shoot? “Of course we had fights. We had a lot of arguments but that was only because of creative differences and that’s healthy. It was nothing personal,” clarifies the actor.

The film will also introduce a new heroine, Zarine Khan, and her striking resemblance to Katrina is extremely obvious in the promos. Khan rubbishes this right away: “If she looked like Katrina then I would be the first person to notice,” But why not take Kaif or another well known face instead of a new one? “Katrina and I have done Yuvvraaj together and you saw what a success that was. She was also very busy around the time that we were shooting. We had no heroine two weeks before the shooting. We spotted Zarine Khan and felt that she was perfect for the part,” explains Khan.

Period films are not a new concept to cinegoers so what is it about the film that will set it apart from the usual grandeur and blood shedding that goes with the rest of them?

“Trust me,” says the charismatic actor, “The most important difference is that this film is in a simple language that everyone will understand. There is no fancy ancient language and unnecessary gestures. This is a comedy, romantic and emotional film set in that time. It is a film about the relationship between a father and a son and about fighting for one’s land. It also has a love story in it because if there was no woman then whatever could have been the reason for so much enmity?” he smiles.