In Don 2, SRK wants to capture the entire European market
By Subhash K. Jha, January 18, 2011 - 14:56 IST
It's not just with his home production Ra.One that Shah Rukh Khan is looking towards capturing the international market in 2011. With Farhan Akhtar's Don 2 too, Shah Rukh goes gloriously global.
And Shah Rukh will be taking on Tom Cruise, no less, with Don 2. The two action-oriented super-slick films on global crime and punishment release globally within a week of one another in December. Hush-hush plans are on to put together an international version of Farhan's ferocious furious and flamboyant flick so that Shah Rukh's Don 2 can come face to face with Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible 4, which incidentally features Anil Kapoor in a cameo.
And to prove how global in execution Don 2 is, here's the thing. A car chase sequence featuring Shah Rukh shot in Berlin last month was so steep and dangerous that it damaged one of the expensive cameras that had been recruited to capture the heart-in-the-mouth stunt. Luckily no one was hurt.
According to a source from the film the Don's character in Don 2: The Chase Continues has gone international with his criminal ambitions. "While in the first part, Don wanted to take over the crime syndicate in India in Don 2, Don wants to capture the entire European market. Shah Rukh's character is no longer an Indian crime lord wanted in 11 countries. He is portrayed as a European gangster, replete with all the trappings of an international kingpin."
The magnitude of the character's power and the external trappings of his prosperity have been captured in Don 2 by deploying a budget that leaves behind all other Indian films on international crime.
To play the European kingpin, Farhan Akhtar and Shah Rukh apparently studied the lives and lifestyles of various international crime lords.
Says a source, "It was one thing for Shah Rukh to portray the Indian don wanted in 11 countries. In Don 2, his character wants to rule Europe. Shah Rukh's clothes, cars, girls, gadgets, body language and perfume had to convey a global aura."
Sources say Don 2 is being assembled on an international scale. And there would probably be a full-scale international version of the film for an NRI global market with the songs eliminated and the drama reduced.
Veteran actor Om Puri who reprises his role of the police inspector from the first part admits everything in Don 2 is scaled up. "I can't tell you the plot. But I will reveal one thing. In a lift together, just when my character tells Priyanka Chopra he is going to retire, the lift door opens and my character stands face to face with Don. That's when my dreams of leaving the police force ends and the chase begins."
Om says most of his scenes in Don 2 are with Priyanka. "Mine is not a lengthy role. But it's an important role. I wasn't part of the chase sequence that you mention. But yes it was unlike anything seen in Hindi films. And yes a camera did get damaged. But no one got hurt."
The actor is all praise for Farhan Akhtar and his unit. "Unlike other Bollywood locations on a foreign location, the stars and the crew were not put up in separate hotels. All of us including the technical crew and junior artistes stayed in the same hotel in Berlin, though the unit members unlike the stars had to share rooms. I've hardly ever worked with a more professional efficient and hospitable unit. Every detail in Berlin was looked into in advance and there were no last-minute glitches. The entire schedule of about a month went off smoothly."
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