Shashank Khaitan's Hindi remake of Sairat goes on the floors today
Natasha Coutinho (MUMBAI MIRROR; December 1, 2017)

Janhvi Kapoor's debut, Dhadak, that features Beyond the Clouds debutant Ishaan Khatter as the male lead, kicks off in Udaipur today. The debutante's parents, actress Sridevi and filmmaker Boney Kapoor, have flown down to the location for her first day, while Ishaan's mother, actress Neelima Azim, is also expected to be present on the set. Director Shashank Khaitan, who has previously helmed Badrinath Ki Dulhania, had been prepping for his next for a better part of the year and is confident of his leads. To be shot across Rajasthan, the film is a Hindi remake of Nagraj Manjule's Marathi hit, Sairat, which had featured Akash Thosar and Rinku Rajguru as leads.

Khaitan tells Mirror that shooting will be wrapped up as soon as possible and that his city-bred leads have been working for months on their dialect and dancing skills to get into the skin of their characters. "It won't be a long shoot; we are wrapping up by March for a July release next year, but the prep for the film had started in May. When you take up the responsibility to adapt a film like Sairat by putting it in a different region, you want to be well-prepared and not be complacent about prep. It is the most crucial part of all my films. We have tried to be as authentic as possible with Janhvi and Ishaan's characters," the filmmaker says.

While Janhvi and Ishaan have already created a lot of buzz ahead of the film, Khaitan is all praise for them, saying, "They are good and hardworking kids, the kind of actors a director hopes to work with. For the rest, I would rather have other people see their work and tell me what they think of it."

When asked about trying his hands at a remake for the first time, the director reveals that the original had inspired him instantly. "It was a challenge to adapt the subject according to my style of storytelling," he says. When asked about the specifics of the process, he adds cryptically, "You will have to see what we have retained from the original."