'Uri' director Aditya Dhar talks about his next 'Ashwatthama' starring Vicky Kaushal

Aditya Dhar made a powerful debut as a director with Uri: The Surgical Strike in 2019. It stars Vicky Kaushal as the lead along with Mohit Raina, Paresh Rawal, Yami Gautam and others. The filmmaker will next helm a mythological movie tentatively titled as The Immortal Ashwatthama, based on the Mahabharata character Ashwatthama. Read to know what he said about the project.

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Aditya Dhar opens up about Ashwatthama

In an interview with a daily, Aditya Dhar opened up about his next as a director. He said that one of the reasons why he chose to weave a story around a mythological character like Ashwatthama from Mahabharat was that, though all the characters in that epic are celestial, he personally felt that Ashwatthama is a character which is flawed. These flaws made him human. He thinks the audience can connect with him and he finds Ashwatthama relevant even in the present times. The filmmaker stated that he is an immortal character, which means he is supposed to be alive even now. So, Ashwatthama is a character of the present times.

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The film is speculated to star Vicky Kaushal, who won a National Award for his performance in Uri. Ronnie Screwvala will bank the project. Talking about the early development, Aditya Dhar said that scripting his concept into a film is a little complicated because he also wants the story to be accessible to a wide audience and therefore he needed time. So, he is basically utilising this period of lockdown to work on that, work on pre-production.

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Speaking about the film's budget, Aditya Dhar said that every story has its correct budget and Ashwatthama is a big canvas film. One has to understand the mathematics of their business. In India, they cannot make a film of ₹500 crores and expect fast recovery. He stated that they made Uri for ₹28 crores and it looked like a film with a budget of around ₹60 crores. The National Award winner said that they are a team of people who can offer the audience a grand-looking film within a small budget.

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Aditya Dhar added that he is a fellow from a middle-class family, and he knows the art of saving money, he is quite a make shifter that way. He mentioned that post-COVID-19, they really have to think about a new design of budget, how to change the percentage of profit etc. He hopes that they will sort that out because Ronnie is best in the business.