The remake of R. Madhavan and Vijay Sethupathi’s blockbuster hit Tamil movie, ‘Vikram Vedha’ is being remade in Hindi (with the same name) starring Hrithik Roshan and Saif Ali Khan. The shoot for the movie is currently underway.
The current shoot schedule is in Abu Dhabi where the set designers have been at work for the last few months to recreate the streets of Lucknow in the deserts of Abu Dhabi.
However, this set has not been set up on a blank canvas. The makers of Vikram Vedha repurposed the set of ‘Tiger Zinda Hai’ to recreate Lucknow and Kanpur.
Both these movies have been set up with the help of ADFC (Abu Dhabi Film Commission). As per Hans Franklin, Film & TV commissioner of ADFC, the production team built Vikram Vedha set around the Tiger set in the Backlot.
The Backlot is approximately 90 acres and it houses several sets at Khalifa Industrial Zone Abu Dhabi (KIZAD) and this area was also the set for the Salman Khan-Katrina Kaif, spy thriller, ‘Tiger Zinda Hai’.
Fraikin told PTI, “’Tiger Zinda Hai’ is a huge set. We built around that set, the hospitals, military base, war-torn streets, and village. They transformed four to five streets of the Backlot into Lucknow.”
Hrithik Roshan just completed his shoot schedule in Abu Dhabi and Fraikin was all praises for the actor. He said, “Hrithik Roshan is such a lovely actor and star, he’s really humble and a nice person. The producers and their team were just fantastic. We worked really well together. I think they had a lovely experience here”.
In fact, for one particular scene, Fraikin said they needed around 2500 extras who all had to look like they were natives of Lucknow and they managed to find that many people in Abu Dhabi itself.
Since the ADFC was started (in 2009), it has facilitated filming of not only Bollywood movies, but also movies and TV shows across other Indian languages.
The first movie to be shot in the Backlot was director Priyadarshan’s Malayalam film ‘Oru Marubhoomikkadha’ way back in 2011. Other movies that have been shot here include, ‘Dishoom’, ‘Baby’, ‘Tiger Zinda Hai’, ‘Saaho’, ‘Race 3’ and recently ‘Bunty Aur Babli 2’.
Upcoming Tiger Shroff starrer, ‘Heropanti 2’ had most of its production done in Abu Dhabi.
The reason that its beneficial for production houses to choose Abu Dhabi to film is that currently they get 30 percent rebate from the ADFC with all permissions for shoot accessed easily.
The ADFC is looking to expand and become the one stop shop for filmmakers to create set designs for their movies. Abu Dhabi will also be hosting India’s popular IIFA awards in May this year.
