Aditya Dhar: The director who almost debuted with a Dharma rom-com

Aditya Dhar was originally gearing up for a Fawad Khan–Katrina Kaif romantic drama that got shelved after 2016.

Transcript

00:00Before Dhurandar, before he became Bollywood's Action Ops guy, did you know Aditya Dhar was

00:05supposed to debut as a big glossy mainstream filmmaker?

00:08Yes, he was almost a dharma style director.

00:11Aditya Dhar grew up in Delhi in a Kashmiri Pandit family, again deeply into theatre,

00:15music, performance, the whole arts ecosystem.

00:18He moved to Mumbai in the mid 2000s hustling for writing and assistant director gigs.

00:23Lyracist here, dialogue writer there, basically building his craft brick by brick.

00:27Around 2016, Dhar was set to debut with the film reportedly titled Rad Baki, starring

00:32Fawad Khan and Katrina Kaif.

00:33But after the 2016 Uri attack, Pakistani artists were barred from Indian films, Fawad Khan was

00:38directly impacted and overnight, the entire film was shelved.

00:42Just like that, the dream debut vanished.

00:44Most people would have waited for another glossy project, Dhar didn't.

00:48He sat down and started writing about the surgical strikes themselves, the very event that had

00:52ended his first film.

00:54And that script became Uri, the surgical strike.

00:56His actual debut, a national award winner, a massive hit.

01:00And somewhere along this journey, life added its own twist.

01:03Dhar and Yami Gautam first worked together on film.

01:06She was the actor, he was the writer-director, a collaboration that quietly turned into a partnership

01:11off-screen too.

01:12So before Dharandar, before the combat boots and the tactile lines, remember this.

01:16Aditya Dhar could have entered the industry with a romantic drama, but fate rerouted him, straight

01:21into history.

01:22Straight into history.

01:23No.

01:24No.

01:25No.

01:26No.

01:27No.