The Bollywood remake of popular Tamil movie Vikram Vedha which starred actors Madhavan and Vijay Sethupathi in the lead, is currently under production. The Hindi remake is also helmed by filmmaker duo Pushkar and Gayathri and features actors Hrithik Roshan and Saif Ali Khan in the lead. After speculations and media reports claimed that the shooting location of the upcoming film was changed from Uttar Pradesh to Dubai at the behest of Hrithik Roshan, the makers issued a statement clarifying the same.
Reliance Entertainment, which has bankrolled the project, said in a statement on July 4, "We have been noticing a lot of misleading and totally unsubstantiated reporting on 'Vikram Vedha' shooting locations. We clearly want to state that Vikram Vedha has been shot extensively in India, including Lucknow."
The statement added: "A portion of the film was shot in the United Arab Emirates in October-November of 2021 since it was the only location providing the infrastructure for a bio-bubble that accommodated crew of such scale, also allowing building of sets in a studio during the preceding months of the shoot. We chose to do that out of health and protocol concerns. Any attempt to twist these sets of facts are clearly mischievous and untruthful.”
The makers further mentioned in their statement, "Also we would like to emphatically state that at Reliance Entertainment while we welcome suggestions from creative talent, the production and budgetary decisions are a centralised prerogative." Vikram Vedha, which is based on the Indian folktale, 'Vikram aur Betal', tells the story of a tough police officer who sets out to track down and hunt a menacing gangster. The film stars Hrithik Roshan and Saif Ali Khan playing the leads with Radhika Apte in a prominent role.
The Hindi remake of Vikram Vedha, which commenced filming in October 2021, is presented by Gulshan Kumar, T-Series Films and Reliance Entertainment in association with Friday Filmworks and YNOT Studios.The film, which additionally stars Rohit Saraf, Yogita Bihani, Sharib Hashmi and Satyadeep Mishra, is set to have a theatrical release on September 30 this year. The Tamil movie released in 2017. It bagged four Filmfare South awards under the categories Best Director-Tamil (Pushkar-Gayathri), Best Actor-Tamil (Vijay Sethupathi), Best Male Playback Singer-Tamil (Anirudh Ravichander) and Critics’ Award for best Actor-South (R Madhavan).