After shooting across the UAE, Welcome To The Jungle has returned to India for its finishing touches — the final 20-day schedule of the ensemble comedy. In 2023, Akshay Kumar launched the franchise with a musical teaser before filming pivotal scenes in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Ras Al-Khaimah. Now, director Ahmed Khan’s venture is wrapping up its Mumbai schedule, which began on November 6.

“A few setbacks have happened, but the shooting has always been on track,” shares a source from the unit. “Ahmed shot two romantic songs in Dubai with Akshay and Disha [Patani] at the end of October. He returned on November 5 and resumed shooting the next day. Ahmed and producer Firoz A Nadiadwala are leaving no stone unturned to make the film look grand and larger-than-life with its 34-member star cast,” the source adds.

To shoot the scenes, Khan wanted specific plants and trees in the frame to enhance the film’s aesthetic. The source reveals that production designer Shailesh Mahadik created an expansive jungle in Film City, Goregaon, where “action and comic scenes are being shot. The area is so big that actors and units are using choppers to travel from one area to another.”

The director confirms, “Post [the shoot in Mumbai], we will head for a 20-day climax schedule featuring all the actors together followed by a song sequence.”

Khan is scouting for forest areas in North India for the last leg of the shoot, where action master Abbas Mogul will choreograph the sequences, including “chase sequences, gun fights, blasts, and a sequence with 300 horses in the climax.” Source adds, “The last schedule will begin from the first week of December, after which an introduction song with the entire cast will be shot in Dubai.”

Dec 2023 - Filming began.

Early 2024 - Delays due to scheduling conflicts.

August 2024 - Set of a Kashmir town was destroyed due to heavy rains and had to be rebuilt.

Mid-June 2025 - Kashmir schedule deferred due to unrest following the Pahalgam attack.

October 2025 - Production activity resumed in phases.

Akshay Kumar's upcoming action drama Gabbar Is Back is a remake of the original Tamil film Ramanaa directed by superhit director A R Murugadoss. The film is about a common man who decides to abolish corruption in society. In our country where we believe that corruption is inevitable, rape is no longer rare and laws are easily broken, excerpts from a conversation with the super disciplined Akshay Kumar on his formula of making society crime free -'Make strict laws with severe punishment, strong enforcement and public display of the effect of breaking it.'

Portraying a vigilante on screen is fine, but do you actually believe that in real life, there is a way to get rid of crime?
I was recently shooting in Ras Al Khaimah when I discovered to my utmost surprise that for a city that is geographically bigger than even Dubai, it had just about 30 policemen guarding it. The hotel rooms are never locked by any guest as no one ever steals. And do you know why in places like UAE and Saudi Arabia there is no crime? Because their laws are very stringent, discipline is strictly enforced by the authorities and punishment is so severe that people feel scared at even the thought of committing a crime. You try and touch a girl there and you see what happens. One Indian man narrated an incident to me. He had broken the red light signal and was happy and relieved to find that no one caught him till after sometime, he saw two policemen come up to him, made him stop the car and took him to the police station. They asked him very politely if he had broken the signal. And of course, he confessed to breaking it. All they did was that they took him to another room and made him bald all along, talking to him very politely. The kind of humiliation they put him through, no one would dare even break a signal there. In Dubai, if you drop your wallet on the ground and you walk back the next day, you will still find it lying there as they are shit scared of stealing due to the very strict laws and its enforcement. In our country, I recently heard an interview with a rapist who said, 'Kya hoga zyada se zyada? I will have to go to jail for a couple of years if I am found guilty.' We need to increase the scare amongst people who commit crimes about the punishment they will face if they are caught and they must believe that there is a good chance that they will be caught. Why should women need to learn martial arts in India to defend themselves? They should be able to walk freely. But no, they can't, so they need to be taught martial arts for self-defence. The percentage of rape in India is not higher than other countries. But the punishment needs to be severe and made public, so that it is seen and makes people scared to ever repeat that heinous crime. Recently in Juhu, there was a case where a houseboy killed an old woman and ran away. He was later found somewhere in UP. How could he think of doing it? Law should be made and enforced in such a way that he would not even dream of doing this. In Hong Kong, if you drive 20 kms above the speed limit, you pay a fine. If you drive further 20 kms faster, you pay a heavier fine and further if you drive 20 kms faster, you land up spending two days in jail. Imagine that's just for fast driving, so obviously people don't break the law. These candle light marches are just fashionable and I am totally against it. Look at our own Mumbai. Why has drinking and driving almost stopped? Only because the rules were made stricter. And if you were found drinking and driving, you have no option but to spend a few days in jail. The law has not just been formed but enforced, as a result people know that they have seen enough people getting caught and thus, the scare is enough to keep them away from drinking and driving. And that is the only solution.

Do you believe that films can make an impact on society?
Films do make a difference for sure. I know for sure that post seeing my film Oh My God!, there are people who stopped offering milk and money to idols of God.

What does the line, 'Tum mein bhi Gabbar hai' really mean?
In the film, I play a vigilante and go above the gunda raaj to find the solution, but in real life the effect of Gabbar should be that people should be scared of law, nahi toh Gabbar aa jayega. So it means that be scared of the law, otherwise Gabbar aa jayega or law aa jayega. Gabbar is thus metaphorically comparable to the law.

Akshay Kumar's Airlift is an edge-of-the-seat entertaining thriller. The story, based on real incidents, is set in 1990 in Kuwait, the time of the famous Gulf War when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The film has Akshay playing Ranjit Katyal, a wealthy and powerful Indian businessman, who, though initially considers himself a Kuwaiti rather an Indian, finding himself and the lives of his family in danger, becomes eventually the man who helps evacuate 1,70,000 Indians from Kuwait and brings them back safely to India. To shoot the film, the director Raja Menon needed to recreate Kuwait and Baghdad of that time. We bring you an exclusive look of Akshay shooting in an old street of Ras-Al-Khaimah, which looks just like Kuwait in 1990.