Nitin Kumar Gupta’s ‘Sayonee’ is ready for theatre release this week
Director Nitin Kumar Gupta is excited for the release of his film Sayonee starring Rahul Roy, next Friday, December 18th, 2020. The director says that while he would love to see people come to the theatre to watch his film, he would also want them to be careful about their safety as we are still not out of the pandemic. “On one hand, I would like the audience to throng to the theatres, on the other, the pandemic scares me and I would advise social distancing and masks at all time. What gives me comfort is that even if people don’t all come to the theatres, they are going to catch the film in their living rooms soon as we will bring the film to OTT and satellite as well. However, there is simply no replacement for big-screen viewing for an action-packed foreign locations grand song and dance film like Sayonee,” he says.
Talking about casting newcomers Tanmay Ssingh and Musskan S as the lead pair, Nitin says, “We went through a rigorous audition because the lead, especially the hero, needed to have Aamir khan’s chocolate boy attractive looks mixed with Tiger Shroff’s action persona. The film has two different avatars, a simple village kid who converts to a vengeance spouting killer in Russia. The action sequences are tough and very real, without green screen and body doubles. The hero had to fight underwater with 7 feet Russians, hang from under racing trucks, run through live explosions, rip the throat off assassins while hangings upside down and handcuffed. The lead was cast as a result of the audition. No established actor could have done these sorts of stunts.”
The filmmaker has been in the industry for a while and says it has grown by leaps and bounds. “One major difference I see is that between spools of film and digital, the director is no longer restricted to the amount of reel time has to film. Film was much more expensive and limiting. Apart from that influx of streaming, content has opened up the audience sensibilities to ideas they would not have explored maybe 5 years back. Content is more valued now than star power,” he says.
He adds, “With streaming content, audience’s mind has opened up to new and exciting ideas, where earlier they were only exposed to masala all in one package. High concept ideas like Walk and LAC can be explored with more commercial viability. We have filmed LAC as Indian films industry’s first single-shot movie set over a few hours, which would have been unthinkable a couple of years back.”