‘No filmmaker wants to hurt people. We want to entertain’

It’s not every day that a sequel is announced barely a week after the film’s release. That too, when its box-office earnings haven’t met expectations. But that hasn’t deterred Sunny Deol and director Gopichand Malineni from envisioning Jaat 2, the sequel to their latest actioner Jaat. As we got on a call with the director hours after the announcement, he said that he always intended to take the story forward. “In the film, the last sequence is a lead-in for the sequel. I was confident while shooting Jaat that it will work well for us to make a second part,” he stated. 

All eyes were on Jaat as it saw Deol returning to the big screen after the mammoth success of Gadar 2: The Katha Continues (2023). The actioner, also starring Saiyami Kher, hasn’t exactly taken the box office by storm, having reportedly earned Rs 62 crore so far. Did it fall short of Malineni’s expectation? Yes, he candidly admitted. “The censor clearance got delayed. So, our advance booking window opened only a day before the release. Had it opened two-three days earlier, we would’ve got bigger opening numbers. But since then, it has only grown,” he assessed.`

Gopichand Malineni

The April 10 offering also courted controversy. Since its release, members of the Christian community have demanded a ban on the film over a scene that shows hooligans entering a church and Randeep Hooda standing in a pose that resembles Christ’s crucifixion. At the time of our interview, Malineni said they had tweaked the setting before the film’s release. “The censor board didn’t mention anything for the trailer cut, but later, it told us to blur the background in the film print. It was done even before people objected. If a film has to be a blockbuster, it has to be watched by as many people as possible. No filmmaker wants to hurt any people or community. We want to entertain them.”

Currently, the director is prepping for his Telugu film, which will roll in June, after which he plans to develop Jaat 2. “The sequel’s idea is already in place,” says Malineni, who has big plans for his Bollywood run. “I want to work with Salman [Khan] and Shah Rukh [Khan] sir in mass entertainers and show how I imagine them as heroes.”

Controversy, then cuts

An FIR was filed in Punjab against Sunny Deol, Randeep Hooda, director Gopichand Malineni and producer Naveen Yerneni over a scene that depicts Hooda standing in a church in a pose that resembles Christ’s crucifixion, and shows violence in the holy setting. On Friday evening, the makers announced that the sequence was deleted. They issued a statement that read, “There has been a backlash for a specific scene in the film. The scene has been removed with immediate effect. Our intention was not to hurt any religious sentiments. We deeply regret it and have taken a quick action of deleting the scene from the film. We sincerely apologise to everyone whose beliefs have been hurt.”