Siddharth Anand’s Pathaan is wreaking havoc at the box-office. To call it a blockbuster would be an understatement. Shah Rukh’s comeback is, in one word, spectacular, in two words super spectacular.
While Pathaan also puts Siddharth Anand at the forefront of the box-office as a major force to reckon with, the film’s biggest achievement is that it has demolished the myth that the South has taken over Bollywood. It sounded like a threat to civilization, almost like one of those alien invasions that wipes out a race.
But sorry, this race is not about one-upmanship. It is about sovereignty in unity. While Hindi cinema is proud to be a part of Indian cinema, it can’t be seen as a subsidiary or an appendage to any other film industry, only as an ally.
As far as Bollywood being “taken over” is concerned, Pathaan’s head-reeling boxoffice figures are a sufficient response. What Shah Rukh Khan and Siddharth Anand have done goes far beyond boxoffice numbers. They have opened up the barred gates of the movie theatres for audiences to pour in.
The craze for Pathaan is unbelievable. The furore and frenzy far surpass what we witnessed for RRR or KGF 2. The collections, which were expected to pan out over the weekend , are now expected to hold steady post-weekend. This could mean that Pathaan would break all previous records of blockbusters .
The happiest man from the Pathaan team is Aditya Chopra, who believed in Pathaan from Day 1. A very close friend of the reclusive Chopra reveals, “Adi had a gut feeling that in Pathaan, director Siddharth Anand had the imaginative bandwidth to create something to match the Marvel super-hero movies. That is what the aspiration behind Pathaan was all along: to create something on a par with the Marvel universe.”
Apparently, director Anand was given a creative and financial carte blanche.
Says Adi Chopra’s buddy, “No budgetary restriction were placed. If Sid Anand wanted to shoot in Spain, Spain it was.”
The film was shot across the world in Afghanistan, Spain, UAE, Turkey, Russia, Italy and France. Adi apparently told Siddharth Anand, ‘Make the film you want to make, make it how you want to make it.’
And that’s why Pathaan is the costliest film Yash Raj films has ever produced. It is also likely to be Yash Raj’s biggest money-spinner ever.
Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out.
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