Producer-director Vipul Shah’s ‘Waqt – The Race Against Time’ starring two superstars Amitabh Bachchan and Akshay Kumar completes 16 years on April 20 this year, but the family drama still continues to hold the same freshness, emotions and strong family values among the cinema lovers.
Besides the movie scoring supremely well in all aspects, be it brilliant story-telling and direction, superlative performances (by Amitabh Bachchan, Akshay Kumar, Priyanka Chopra, Shefali Shah, Rajpal Yadav and Boman Irani) and apt music, most importantly, it was Amitabh Bachchan and Akshay Kumar’s on-screen, father-son jodi after the success of ‘Aankhen’ that set the box-office cash registers ringing. Besides Akshay-Priyanka’s sizzling chemistry, the movie’s songs are still etched in the memories of many, especially the Holi song ‘Do me a favour – let’s play holi’.
Talking about the movie completing 16 years, Vipul Shah shares an interesting anecdote, “While we were making ‘Aankhen’, I had discussed about a play which was written and directed by Aatish Kapadia, with Amit sir (Bachchan) and Akshay (Kumar). They both loved the story and we decided to make this film. When I informed Amitji and Akshay about me turning producer with this film, both of them were willing to waive off their fees but me and my partner (on the film) Mr. Manmohan Shetty did not agree with it and paid them their remuneration but the fact that such big superstars stood by me and were even willing to waive off their fees, was a very touching and heartwarming gesture.”
“Manmohan Shetty was the first person to support me and back me as a producer and that was another wonderful relationship that I have developed with him which is as warm and wonderful even today. That’s how we started work on ‘Waqt – The Race Against Time’ and my production banner, ‘Sunshine Pictures Private Limited’ was also set up. It will always be a very special film for me,” adds the filmmaker.
Vipul Shah is currently working on two ambitious and contrasting projects simultaneously – a medical thriller titled ‘Human’ (web show) and ‘Sanak’ (movie), While ‘Human’ is an emotional drama about the underbelly of the human drug testing and the world of medical scam, ‘Sanak’ is an intense, emotional, action film.
