Wazir is an upcoming 2016 Indian action thriller film directed by Bejoy Nambiar. The film is written by Abhijat Joshi and Vidhu Vinod Chopra, and is jointly produced by Chopra and Rajkumar Hirani. It stars Amitabh Bachchan & Farhan Akhtar in lead roles along with Aditi Rao Hydari, Neil Nitin Mukesh and Manav Kaul in supporting roles and John Abraham in a cameo appearance.
The film tells the story of two unusual friends—a paralysed chess grandmaster and a grief stricken ATS officer—brought together by a peculiar twist of fate as part of a wider conspiracy that has cast a dark shadow over their lives.
The first shot was taken on 28 September 2014 in Mumbai. The trailer of the movie was released on 18 November 2015, and is scheduled to release on 8 January 2016.
Production
The idea of Wazir came to Vidhu Vinod Chopra after badminton player Syed Modi was shot dead on 28 July 1988 in Lucknow. However, Chopra claims that this film is completely different from the incident. When Chopra met his writer Abhijat Joshi in 1994, he told him about the idea of setting a thriller around two chess players. The title of the film had gone through several changes including Fifth Move, 64 Squares and Chess being some of them. Later, between 2000 to 2004, they both wrote it in English. It was supposed to be Chopra’s first Hollywood film, with Dustin Hoffman playing the protagonist. In 2005, their producer Robert Newmyer suddenly passed away. The script of Wazir took five years to complete. Then Chopra saw the black-and-white portions of Bejoy Nambiar’s David(2013), which he liked. Later Chopra recalls: "I called him(Bejoy), and I have an almirah(Cupboard) full of scripts, so I opened it and asked him ‘Which one? He picked this one. Then we worked for two more years on it."
The working title of the film was Do, which was changed to Wazir in October 2014. Both Chopra and Joshi consulted chess experts from America for the film. The cinematography of the film is done by Sanu Varghese, who had previously worked with Nambiar in David. The films story was tweaked constantly during its seven-month editing period. This is the first film edited by Chopra after his directorial venture Parinda(1989). Joshi, who is also first time editor of this film, believed that "a film is rewritten on the editing table." Visual effects were used to hide Bachchan’s leg, and to make him look disabled. The wheelchair on which he sits throughout the film was chosen among 40 to 50 wheelchairs. When Neil Nitin Mukesh was offered the role, the film was titled Ek Aur Ek Do, which was later changed by Chopra to Wazir; based on the character name of Nitin Mukesh in it.
Casting
At the screening of Lakshya(2004), Chopra informed Farhan Akhtar about the script of Wazir, and wanted his feedback on that. The next time they met him in 2014, after which Akhtar heard the script and agreed to do the film. He went through intense training and put on eight kilograms of weight to play the role of an Anti Terrorist Squad officer. He also changed his diet and met some of his friends who were ATS officers for the preparation.
Akhtar agreeing for the role puzzled Chopra, who recalls: “At that time, Javed Akhtar(Farhan’s father) and I were engaged in a public verbal duel. When I asked Farhan what made him agree to take up the role, he said, ‘The script is so good that I will bear with you”.[4] The film’s scale kept growing by time when it was being written, and Chopra recalls: “We realised the protagonist can’t be American. We had to bring in our own sensibilities. Our cinema is more flamboyant. So the protagonist needed to be flamboyant too. We thought of making the chess master an Indian and approached [Amitabh] Bachchan for it”. Bachchan had also read the original script 12 years ago, but remembered it when Chopra mentioned.[4] Aditi Rao Hydari was cast after Chopra saw her dance, and it took him one second to finalise her for the film. John Abraham and Neil Nitin Mukesh make extended cameo appearances in the film.