Come 2 October, 2014 and the fans of Vishal Bhardwaj’s brand of cinema will be treated with yet another masterpiece in the making – Haider – which also happens to be the last in the trilogy of the filmmaker’s fascination with Shakespearean plays.
The trailer of the feature released yesterday on the online streaming giant – YouTube – and has already garnered close to 1.3 million views (at the time of writing). This film an adaptation of ‘Hamlet’ will see Shahid Kapoor reprise the role of Haider, a young man who returns home to Kashmir on receiving news of his father’s disappearance. But, not only does he learn that security forces have detained his father for harbouring militants, but also that his mother (Tabu) is in a relationship with his very own uncle (Kay Kay Menon). Soon Haider learns that his uncle is responsible for the gruesome murder of his father, and what follows is his journey to avenge his father’s death.
Speaking exclusively to AnimationXpress.com Govardhan Vigraham (2nd Unit director and VFX supervisor on ‘Haider’) says: “The film is shot in the troublesome areas of Kashmir, though we didn’t face many problems. We experienced erratic weather conditions while shooting there with heavy rainfall and snow around the clock.”
It has been learnt that the film is currently in its post production stages, with Digikore Studios delivering the VFX for this movie. “Schedule was one of the biggest hurdles in order to finish everything on time, and we are still working on the remaining bits. The VFX used in the film has blended well with the narrative, and we are confident that the audience will be spellbound with the visuals,” Vigraham exults.
Coming back to the trailer of Haider, it certainly has the aura of Bhardwaj’s flavour of music and picturisation of the pivotal characters is fabulous. The ‘paradise on earth’ has been brilliantly captured on lens by Pankaj Kumar (DOP) and ably supported with some thought provoking lyrics by Gulzar saab.
Vigraham adds: “We had nearly 40-50 artists from Digikore Studios working on the project at any given time. We have done some great CG as well as green screen composites apart from other deliverables for this feature and are really positive of the result so far.”
We at AnimationXpress.com, hope that unlike Bhradwaj’s earlier outings with ‘Maqbool’ and ‘Omkara’ this Shakespeare adaptation scorches the box-office and brings the master director the much needed commercial success, to add to his critical acclaim.