Aditya Dhar REVEALS He Was Called Out For Roping Vicky Kaushal In URI: 'They Said We Were Making A Huge Mistake'

Filmmaker Aditya Dhar recently opened up about his directorial debut film, URI: The Surgical Strike. While promoting his upcoming film, Article 370, he shared that many people objected to Vicky Kaushal’s casting in the 2019 blockbuster. He even opened up about how to stick to the choice of casting him, even though everyone said they were making a mistake. 

In an interview with India Today, Aditya shared, “Everybody went up to Ronnie (Screwvala) at that point and said you are making a huge mistake; you are making a war film with a lanky boy who has never done a solo hero commercial film, and you are mounting such an important film on his shoulder.”

He added, “So our belief at the end of the day was that we are all working towards something extraordinary, and we worked 10 times harder than anyone in this industry because we wanted to prove to them that it is not where you are coming from; that doesn’t matter; what matters more is where you are going,” he said.

Aditya, who was planning to work with Vicky in The Immortal Ashwatthama, recently opened up about why the film got shelved. At the recent press conference, Dhar revealed that the mythological superhero actioner was “too big” for Indian cinema, and therefore, the team understood it was “impossible to make it” considering the budgeting constraints.

“We have put that on the back burner right now. I’ll be honest, the kind of vision we all had for that was too big to work for Indian cinema. The kind of VFX quality we were looking at, nobody has even strived for it here,” he shared. 

The Immortal Ashwatthama was supposed to go on floors in 2020, but the film was delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. Its production work was then supposed to begin in 2022 but was delayed again due to budget-related issues.

Previously, Vicky Kaushal had also called the repeated delays regarding the movie ‘disheartening’. “There will be a better time to make that film. More than disheartening, it is that thing that any film should be made at the best time for that film. Every time the film is bigger than me or any individual attached to it,. So, we have to choose a time that justifies making that film. So, we are waiting for that time to come,” he told PTI.