It seems to be the season of Bollywood debuts for directors from the Marathi film industry. A while ago, we had told you about Bucket List director Tejas Deoskar foraying into the Hindi film industry with a film headlined by Rakul Preet Singh. Now, we have learnt that another Marathi filmmaker, Sameer Vidwans, whose biographical film Anandi Gopal (2019) won the award for Best Film on Other Social Issues at the 67th National Awards among other accolades, is set to helm a Bollywood film, too.

Sources close to the project confirm that the film, which is said to be a love story, will feature Kartik Aaryan in the lead.This film will be an addition to the actor’s repertoire, who has other interesting films lined up in Bollywood. A source close to the project informs, “The film is currently in the pre-production stage. The leading lady hasn’t been finalised yet and the makers are looking for someone who fits the role perfectly. This is a contemporary film and a sweet love story that will hopefully go on floors by the end of this year.”

We reached out to Sameer and Kartik for an official confirmation, but they remained unavailable for comment.

For any studio to win seven National Film Awards in a year, across categories for films in different languages and genres, is a landmark moment. Zee Studios had backed Manikarnika - The Queen Of Jhansi, for which Kangana Ranaut won the Best Actress award. The Marathi film Anandi Gopal won two awards — Best Film on Social Issues and Best Production Design. Singer B Praak’s rendition of Teri Mitti from Kesari won him the Best Male Playback Singer Award. Filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri won for the Best Screenplay and his wife Pallavi Joshi won the Best Supporting Actress Award for The Tashkent Files. The Best Haryanvi Film of the year, Chhoriyan Chhoron Se Kam Nahi Hoti, was also backed by the studio. Beaming with pride, Shariq Patel, CBO, Zee Studios, spoke to BT about the big win and the road map for the year ahead:

As much as all of us at Zee Studios want to host a grand bash, we have to keep the celebrations muted. The second wave of Coronavirus is here. So, we have to ensure we’re all safe. I am sure once we tide past this difficult time, we can celebrate. We are overjoyed and extremely humbled with these wins. The work of our studio has been acknowledged at the highest level in this country. When the films had been entered into the competition, we knew that we would win something, but we had no idea we’d come so far. Anandi Gopal, Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi, The Tashkent Files and Chhoriyan Chhoron Se Kam Nahi Hoti have all made us proud. It makes us believe that maybe we are selecting films to partner with correctly — the films are finding resonance with the audience and fraternity.

We have always followed a multi-language strategy. We have always believed in creating great commercial content with a promising story at the core and with the right mix of talent. The idea has always been to come up with content that cuts across as many boundaries as possible. We have been tapping the pulse of the audience, keeping this as our benchmark across languages for years, and the National Award wins in so many categories across films in different languages is like a reaffirmation of everything we believe in as a company. As a studio, we plan to invest more in stories that transcend boundaries. Awards are never the starting point of any project that we work on. When a film turns out well, and it finds resonance with the audience, we know we have a winner at hand. Films like Anandi Gopal and Chhoriyan Chhoron Se Kam Nahi Hoti were trying to say something so important. Anandi Gopal put the spotlight on a hero of our society. Yes, like every other studio, we, too, love to see awards coming our way, but our priority is to entertain the audience with newer stories and groundbreaking content. With the National Awards, the idea is to get back to the drawing board and come out with even more engaging stories for the years to come.

We’re proud to partner with the right mix of artistes. Kangana, Manoj Bajpayee, who won for Bhonsle and Dhanush who won for Asuran, are fantastic actors. It gives us joy to work with some of these names with such frequency. Manoj worked with us for Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari and is now a part of the cast of our film, Silence. Thalaivi’s trailer, too, has won Kangana a lot of praise. And we’re just getting started for 2021. In the next 12 months, we will release about 25-30 films across languages. We have to scale up the studio’s operations. There will be a quantum jump in the films that we are producing.

I support films like Roohi and Mumbai Saga, which opted for theatrical runs. It is easy to go direct-to-digital and pocket the money and not worry about the box office. I take pride in the fact that we started this trend with Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari. We have to ensure that as content creators, we stand by the theatres in this hour. Vaccination drives have only made us all hopeful, but planning a film’s release does remain a challenge today. We can only react to a situation as it unfolds. So, our plans will also change depending on where we are in this new normal at a said time.