Actor Priyanshu Painyuli regrets missing out the chance to be a part of Kill (2024). “I was approached for the antagonist role, but since I was doing another project, the dates clashed,” says Priyanshu, who recently shot for the series Paan Parda Zarda.

He adds, “The director (Nikhil Nagesh Bhat) had seen my previous work and he had offered me a few roles in the past as well, but things didn’t materialize. When he came to me with this one, we had even started talking and doing readings. But the timing just didn’t work out.” Actor-dancer Raghav Juyal eventually played the part in Kill and was lauded for his performance.

Sharing why he couldn’t make time for it, Priyanshu adds, “The film required a lot of physical training. I was shooting for Pippa (2023), and as the schedule clashed, I had to let it go.”

The 36-year-old admits that it wasn’t an easy decision and the sense of missing out became more palpable when he watched the film on the big screen.

“I was shooting with Tanya Maniktala (actor), who played the lead in Kill. She told me, ‘Go watch it’. I wrapped up the shoot and went straight to the theatre that night. Raghav did a fantastic job. He owned the character and brought something very raw and unpredictable to it. Watching him, I did feel I missed out. When you see someone else doing it well, you don’t feel bad in a bitter way, but it’s like you wanted a toy really badly and you see someone else playing with it,” he ends.

The night before our chat, director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat had dropped by at an Andheri multiplex to see the audience’s reaction to Kill. “The oohs, aahs, clapping and cheering—there is nothing better than that,” he smiles.

Kill is unlike any Bollywood movie we’ve seen so far. Set almost entirely inside a train, the Lakshya and Raghav Juyal-starrer is unabashedly violent. Its biggest feat is that it’s among the few Indian films to get a Hollywood adaptation, when the reverse is the norm —John Wick director Chad Stahelski is set to produce the remake for Lionsgate. For this, Bhat credits producers Karan Johar and Guneet Monga Kapoor, who showed faith in the material.

“They didn’t stop at making the film; they distributed and released it in Latin America and Japan. They got Lionsgate on board. People [draw parallels with] a John Wick or The Raid, but that’s because there is a lack of reference point from India. John Wick producers remaking this, is a huge thing for Indian films. I will meet them in Los Angeles soon. They said it’s a unique film because they felt for the antagonist as much as for the protagonist. The action and all is great, but the film emotionally gripped them.”

While the action fare was inspired by a burglary Bhat had witnessed on a train from Patna to Pune in the mid-90s, he is eager to see how the Hollywood adaptation will be anchored. “In 2021, there were 699 thefts and robberies attempted in Indian trains. They will have to adapt it to a local story from their culture.”

Kill is touted as Hindi cinema’s most brutal film. That makes us wonder what led Bhat to make such a gory movie. “There is so much latent anger and angst in me. I left advertising to pursue filmmaking. In 2008, I made a film [Saluun] that didn’t release. For eight years, I was struggling to make another movie; I got my next in 2016. In 2015, I remember taking the longest bath of my life. For an hour-and-a-half, I was standing in the shower, thinking of everyone who has gone ahead of me—my friends, cousins, and colleagues. I decided to not waste my time; it’s with that angst that I wrote this film. Fani [Juyal’s character] came to me before Amrit [Lakshya’s character] did. I was channelling my angst in the story.”

Kill is having the kind of journey that every filmmaker aspires for his movie. Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s directorial venture, starring Lakshya Lalwani and Raghav Juyal, premièred at Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), and was recently screened at the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival. The action fare— think stunts and gore along the lines of John Wick—is entirely shot on a train. The director’s next outing, Apurva, too is a survival tale. So, we begin our chat with the obvious question: what’s with the gore on screen?

“I get that a lot, especially this year. I am told I need to go see a shrink,” he laughs. But Kill was written in 2020 during the pandemic. “I think the stress and insecurities that were pent up, were put on paper.”

Having producers Karan Johar and Guneet Monga Kapoor backing your vision can be a high in itself. The joy is only heightened with the positive reviews at TIFF. But Bhat remains composed, saying, “I’m glad both Kill and Apurva are in good places.”

That Apurva, led by Tara Sutaria and Abhishek Banerjee, is ready to reach the audience must be comforting for Bhat, who spent 14 years searching for collaborators to back the powerful story of a woman fighting male assailants.

“Apurva was written in 2009. I know women are stronger than men. I have seen powerful women all my life—my DA [director’s assistant] is a woman, my creative producer is a woman and has contributed a lot to this film. In Kill, I wanted a woman to do the dialogues. As a writer-director, I acknowledge that I’d never know what a woman goes through.”

Today, he is happy that the Disney+ Hotstar offering has shaped up exactly as he wanted—“uninhibited”. But he clearly remembers how difficult it was, during those 14 years, to pitch the woman-led story to an industry that loves to see male actors as the saviour in narratives.

“The producers, who I first pitched Apurva to, kept saying a hero should come and rescue the girl. Ek hero daal do, they said. But I didn’t want to change the story of a woman trying to save herself. That’s the film I set out to make. When you see a woman fight back, you root for her. People wanted to make it lighter. Some felt it’s not a [mainstream] film, but it is.”