Amid no signs of relief from the nationwide lockdown and the Covid-19 pandemic, prominent actors and filmmakers like Akshay Kumar, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, Ritesh Sidhwani, Farhan Akhtar, among others, have decided to demolish their empty and unused film sets ahead of monsoon to avoid financial losses. Due to the current crisis, the film sets are lying empty and the makers are worried that the upcoming rainy season will double the trouble for them.
The sets of Akshay Kumar’s upcoming film Prithviraj, which is being produced by Yash Raj Films, will be razed down. This is Yash Raj Films’ first ever historical film which they had announced on Akshay Kumar’s 52nd birthday. According to the makers, sequences will be shot in indoor sequences whenever filming resumes. Two sets—a palace and an arena—which were erected in Mumbai, will be taken down. Filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who is known for bigbudget films, too, has decided to raze down the sets of his upcoming film Gangubai Kathiwadi in Mumbai.
Bhansali had already cleared the amount for the maintenance of sets as his team assumed that shooting would resume within a month but unfortunately that didn’t happen. With Alia Bhatt in a lead role, the film was supposed to get released o n 1 1 September 2020. Similarly, sets of Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani-produced film Dongri To Dubai, which was started in February this year, will be scrapped. The film features actor Avinash Tiwary in a lead role and its sets were erected in Mumbai’s Madh Island and Vile Parle areas.
The film’s director, Shujaat Saudagar, says that the lockdown extension and the upcoming monsoon have created a problem for the sets. He further says that the sets cannot stand for too long once the monsoon begins. The makers spent a lot of hard work on sets to represent Dongri during the 1980s and the 1990s, to showcase six decades of the life of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.