Ajay Devgn: Shooting Runway 34 was Tough Because it Had it's Own Technical Challenges | Exclusive

Ajay Devgn is gearing up for the release of his third directorial Runway 34, a thriller based on real events, in which he will be seen playing a pilot. “I enjoy challenges,” he declares. “The main criteria is that I need to find the story interesting. Once the story is locked, I visualise whether I can create something which other directors can’t. I mentally plan everything but I improvise a lot on the set,” Devgn adds about his criteria of choosing a film as a director.

What prompted him to take up Runway 34 as director? “The story came me to around three years back and at that time, I wasn’t planning to direct it. One year passed by and then the pandemic happened. I was sitting at home and suddenly remembered this script and I asked the writers if they had made the changes. They had made those changes and they were waiting for my call. After working on the script for two to three months, I got so involved that I started to visualise what was different from other people. I am not saying the other person’s vision is right or wrong, but it is different from mine. Once I started seeing the film, I thought I should make it myself.”

The film, also starring Amitabh Bachchan and Rakul Preet Singh, revolves around Captain Vikrant Khanna (played by Devgn), a flying prodigy, whose flight takes a mysterious course after take-off from its destination.

The actor says that creating the drama inside a cockpit was the most difficult thing. “I have done multiple camera shoots before but Runway 34 was tough because it had it’s own technical challenges. We were shooting in a cockpit where there was limited space to move. You have to bend and squeeze to get inside it. And even as a lot of drama had to be created, I didn’t want the cockpit to look fake. The cockpit size is real. I wanted that feeling of claustrophobia, I didn’t want the cameras to go out and cheat, so I worked out a lot of things to make sure that cameras could move inside that space only. We also took training in terms of how to operate a plane, psychologically what you are thinking, we had a captain on board for that. Also, all our equipment was real. We have tried to be very authentic. But to create drama obviously we had to take certain creative liberties.”

After the trailer was released, many on social media started comparing the film to 2016 Hollywood film Sully featuring Tom Hanks in the lead. Ask the actor about it and he says, “The comparisons don’t bother me. Sully is something that I saw when it had released. Both the films are based on an aviation investigation and those are the similarities. But I have picked up a story which I got inspired by true events. If that resembles something, it doesn’t matter to me. Every film will resemble some other film which has been made in the past.”

Read all the Latest Movies News here