Sanyukta Iyer (MUMBAI MIRROR; October 11, 2017)

Nawazuddin Siddiqui has joined the ensemble cast of Gadar - Ek Prem Katha filmmaker Anil Sharma’s upcoming sci-fi romance, Genius. Anil revealed that when he’d narrated the script to Nawaz a few months ago, the actor was fascinated with the multi-layered character. “Nawaz plays a genius with an IQ of over 180. The way his character understands people, science and the world at large, is completely different,” Anil told Mirror, adding that he is presently on a 40-day schedule of the film in North India.

This week, the unit shot for a Holi song sequence in Vrindavan and around the Ganga Ghat with Anil’s son Utkarsh, who makes his Bollywood debut with Genius.

The debutant had played Sunny Deol and Ameesha Patel’s son, Charanjeet, in dad Anil’s blockbuster 2001 partitiondrama before going on to pursue acting and filmmaking at the Lee Strasburg Theatre and Film Institute in the US. Next up, the unit will be travelling to Dehradun and Delhi since the story follows its characters through several North Indian cities. The third schedule will take place at IIT Roorkee by November-end. “Utkarsh’s character studies there and is identified as a genius in the course of the film. Nawaz’s character encounters him only later. We will be filming with Nawaz towards the year-end in Mumbai,” Anil added.

The first schedule of the 2018 summer release saw Mithun Chakraborty as a National Security Advisor for which art director Bijon Dasgupta had created a grand set of the RAW office on the fourth floor of a Juhu hotel, while another set, of a high-tech war analytics room, was erected at a Mumbai studio. “A fresh face is being launched as the leading lady,” Anil says.