After Gangubai Kathiawadi, other real-life characters to look forward to this year

The Bio-pic boom claims 2022 like no other year in recent times. Here are top 5 real-life characters coming to life this year. 1.          Alia Bhatt in Gangubai Kathiawadi: Career-changing .From now on everything for Alia Bhatt is going to be before and after    Gangubai Kathiawadi. From her body language to her spoken language, she is transformed into this ballsy Madame of a brothel who makes men pee in their pants with one twitch of her eyebrow. How does this pintsized actress manage to be so spectacularly larger-than-life? Alia reminds us of Shabana Azmi in  Godmother. Alia now wants to play another real-life character and I have good reason to believe that her godfather Karan Johar is all set to cast Alia as Ma Sheela. That would be the mother of all bio-pics. 2.          Kartik Aaryan In Captain India: In Hansal’s Mehta’s bio-pic set in in the Indian army Kartik Aaryan who has been climbing from strength to strength is all set to play his first non-fictional character. He plays an IAF officer who masterminded a daring real-life rescue mission. This is for a film to be directed by Hansal Mehta. The master of biopics, Hansal has earlier made films based on real-life characters such as Shahid, Aligarh, Omerta, and Scam 1992. After the stupendous success of his Harshad Mehta bio-series, Hansal who has been continuously working with brilliant actors like Manoj Bajpai and Rajkumar Rao is keen to do a big-screen biopic with a saleable star. For Kartik whose career has been rapidly rising on the box office scale, a Hansal Mehta film is another chance to prove himself as an actor after Ram Madhvani’s    Dhamaka. 3.          Akshay Kumar in Prithviraj Chauhan: It is a first for Akshay Kumar. The actor plays a real-life historical figure for the first time and is one of the truest most beloved heroes from Indian history who fought for the country and love in equal measures. Interestingly this homage to nobility and nationalism comes just after Akshay’s sociopathic outlaw’s act in    Bachchan Pandey  where the actor plays a complete scumbag. The actor had been advised to postpone the perversities of Pandey until Prithviraj hit theatres. But better sense doesn’t always prevail. 4.          Taapsee Pannu in Shabaash Mithu: The story of the Indian women’s cricket team captain Mithali Raj will see Taapsee swinging the bat to hit the ball out of the park. She has learned the game of cricket from scratch like she learned hockey for Soorma. The level of dedication is so fierce that one fears Taapsee may give up acting and take up cricket as her primary profession. Director Srijit Mukherjee tells me of Taapsee’s ferocious determination and dedication for getting it right. She reminds us of Sushant Singh Rajput’s fierce commitment to playing Dhoni. 5.          Madhavan In Rocketry:  The Nambi Effect: The Tamil-Hindi superstar who has completed 28 years as a leading man, now plays the veteran space scientist Nambi Narayanan in the bio-pic that Maddy directs. Like Nambi Narayanan Madhavan has learned to construct a rocket from scratch… In 1994 Narayanan a space-research scientist at the Indian Space Research Organization(ISRO) had been falsely accused of espionage. Madhavan delves deep into every aspect of Narayanan’s life without apology. There’s no point in doing a bio-pic unless the complete truth is told. The Nambi Narayanan biopic is being readied for release simultaneously in Hindi, Tamil, and English.

Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He’s been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out.