Ram Gopal Varma on Ladki, plans of working with Amitabh Bachchan on horror film

Over the years, Ram Gopal Varma has given edge-of-the-seat movies, and now his “most ambitious film” Ladki is ready for release. The Indo-Chinese production stars martial artist-turned-actress Pooja Bhalekar, and is touted to be the first-of-its-kind martial arts film in India. “I have had a huge obsession with Bruce Lee (legendary Chinese American martial artist and actor). I saw _Enter The Dragon_ in my college days. I always wanted to make a martial arts film, particularly his style of fighting. The idea kept coming and going,” he tells Firstpost. It was just a few years ago that he finally decided to make a film revolving around martial arts. But he knew that it would be difficult to find a male actor, considering the film is inspired by his idol – Bruce Lee. “Then I thought about making it with a female actor. But India doesn’t have a culture of martial arts, so it was difficult to find a female actor,” he says. He wanted to cast someone who not only knew martial arts but also could act and had a camera-friendly face. “I tried to find an actress, but I couldn’t find. Someone brought Pooja Bhalekar to my notice. I was told that she was a taekwondo champion. Then I contacted her. She came along with her father and gave me a demonstration. The moment I saw it, I realised that I had found the actress of my film,” says Varma.

Talking about his film, the director says, “The character is obsessed with Bruce Lee. And then there is a guy who is obsessed with her. He doesn’t like her obsession with Bruce Lee. He thinks it’s stupid to think that martial arts works these days. So I think it is this emotional connect which makes it different from other action films.” He calls the film his “most ambitious film” only because of Bruce Lee. “Bruce Lee has been on my mind since I saw him on-screen, so for me to recreate the kind of fights he did 40 years back, and to apply present-day technology to capture it… I am not a martial artist, but I believe that I understood Bruce Lee probably more than anyone else,” says the filmmaker. Ask if he reached out to Lee’s family, Varma says, “Not really because the film is not a biopic of Bruce Lee. And whatever material on Bruce Lee is available, I think I have studied everything. It’s like I did a course on Bruce Lee. I don’t think his family could give me anything. “Family could have given me information had I been making a biopic on Bruce Lee, but that is not the context of this film.” It will release in China in more than 40,000 screens on July 15. In India, it will release in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. “There was a delay primarily due to a few factors. One is that Pooja is originally a taekwondo specialist. I wanted her to train in Jeet Kune Do which is Bruce Lee’s style. It took some time. Later I sent her test footage to China. A company got very interested and they came here. They wanted to join in the production,” he says. A few changes in the script were made to suit an Indo-Chinese production. While he’s never made a film on martial arts before, crime genre has become his forte, thanks to movies like _Satya_ and Company. “I am not interested in normal people and normal people’s lives. I like something dark like horror films and films revolving around gangsters, anyone with certain kind of rebellious nature or something unusual in the situation. I have more affinity towards them,” shares the Phoonk director. He feels it’s not just him, but others too who get pulled towards crime related stories. “Generally, I think this is what interests people. If you look at the TV, it’s these things that generally attract people the most. I don’t like slice-of-life kind of films. I don’t connect with rom-coms too,” he says. Remind him of the 1995 hit _Rangeela_ that saw Aamir Khan and Jackie Shroff ’s characters falling in love with Urmila Matondkar ’s Mili, Varma says he never thought the film was a rom-com. “I always thought of it as a throwback to the ’70s, ’60s Hollywood classics like The Sound of Music and just singing in the rain. I was also enamoured by Urmila at the time. The music of AR Rahman was also a rage, not just Rangeela but also Roja that he had composed. Also, it was a story of a guy whom I knew in college. But if you look at Rangeela, the core of it the way it was shot, it was a very intense film. I don’t see it in the genre of rom-com,” he says. He is not ready to make another film like Rangeela any time soon, but he is working on something that is yet to be named. “I work on four or five things simultaneously. I am also working on a script, a horror film that I plan to make with Amitabh Bachchan . It’s in the writing phase,” says Varma, who has worked with the veteran actor on films like Sarkar, Nishabd and _Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag_ . Apart from movies, Varma grabs headlines for his controversial tweets and comments. The most recent being the case that was registered against Varma over his controversial ‘Pandav and Draupadi’ tweet against presidential candidate Draupadi Murmu. He had tweeted, “If Draupadi is the President then who are the Pandavas? And more importantly, who are the Kauravas?” Commenting on it, he says, “Draupadi is a character in Mahabharat. Pandavas are the heroes and Kauravas are the villains. I asked about the people who will oppose and people who will support. It’s only in that context that I put it. I don’t know how others understood and in what way. I never meant to disrespect her. It’s just that it is an unusual name.” As for people slamming him online for his tweets, he says, “Trolling is usually done by people who don’t have work. And I don’t take such people seriously.” Natalia Ningthoujam is a Manipur-based journalist. She knows how to smoothly switch from being a fan to a writer whenever needed. She tweets at @nattynick. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.