Sriram Raghavan, the director of the hit Hindi film Andhadhun, has denied reports of him making a web series based on the December 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight to Kandahar.
When Silverscreen India contacted Raghavan, he denied the news and called it a “fake” piece of information.
Refuting the rumours, he said that production house Matchbox Pictures were in talks for making the series, which will revolve around the flight Indian Airlines that was hijacked on December 24, 1999, while it was travelling to New Delhi from Kathmandu, Nepal.
“I am not doing that web series. The production house that backed my film Andhadhun, Matchbox Pictures, is in talks to do it. I don’t have any further information regarding that,” said Raghavan.
The Indian Airlines Flight, IC 814, was hijacked by five gunmen and passengers on the plane were held hostage for seven days until the demands of releasing three terrorists, who were imprisoned in India, were met by the Indian government. The flight was made to stop at Amritsar, Lahore and Dubai before landing at Kandahar in Afghanistan, which was then controlled by the Taliban. One passenger was killed and several others were wounded. The Malayalam film Kandahar (2010) is inspired by these events.
Meanwhile, Raghavan is soon expected to start working on his upcoming film, Ekkis, starring Varun Dhawan. The director-actor duo had previously worked in Badlapur (2015).
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Raghavan said that Ekkis, which was announced in October 2019, is still being made and he is currently busy with that. “We will be starting the film Ekkis this year around September,” he told Silverscreen India.
Ekkis is a biopic on Paramvir Chakra winner Second Lieutenant Arun Khetarpal, who was martyred in the Battle of Basantar during the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971. Though Raghavan had announced the film in 2019 and it was slated to go on floors in 2020, the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic delayed it. The shoot which was supposed to begin in September 2020, will now begin in September this year.
Ekkis is produced by Dinesh Vijan.