Avinash Lohana (MUMBAI MIRROR; October 18, 2017)

Meghna Gulzar, who is currently shooting for Raazi, featuring Alia Bhatt and Vicky Kaushal, has already landed her next film. Mirror has learnt that the Talvar filmmaker will be directing a biopic on the late Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, which will be produced by Ronnie Screwvala.

Confirming the news, Meghna told Mirror, “I don’t think the current generation or the one before them knows enough about Field Marshal Manekshaw. He was around during the Partition, the subsequent accession of Kashmir, and even during the 1971 Indo-Pak war. He was directly involved in some very significant historical events of our country. More importantly, he was a righteous and straight-forward man of principles; his men loved him.”

The filmmaker points out that more and more filmmakers are opting for true-life stories as they are all searching for real-life heroes. “Also, they are much more gratifying to watch than fictional superheros,” she notes.

Meghna had met Ronnie and his team a few months after the release of Talvar. “We committed to work with each other without even having a subject and over those conversations a few months ago, we landed this subject. It’s extremely challenging and my excitement is high for this story,” she informs, adding that the project is currently in the research phase and co-incidentally, there’s a girl named Meghna Talwar working on it.

“She has been talking to the Field Marshal’s family and his subordinates in the army, people who had been around him. We also have books written on him. Right now, I am in the middle of Raazi so not in the mind space to move on to Sam. It will happen in a few months,” Meghna says, revealing that she plans to sit down with writer Juhi Chaturvedi to figure out a structure once the research is complete.

While she clarifies that it will be more like a true-life inspirational story instead of a biopic, the filmmaker also admits that she likes to delve into casting only after a story structure is in place. “My bandwidth for these things will open up only after Raazi goes into post-production. We will hopefully take this film on the floors by the next year-end,” Meghna signs off.