Sunny Deol’s ‘Gadar’ Sequel, Spinoff on the Cards as Zee Studios Mulls Speciality Arthouse Division (EXCLUSIVE)

Zee Studios blockbuster Gadar 2, headlined by Sunny Deol, could get a third part and a spinoff, provided the story is right.

The film is already amongst the highest Indian grossers of the year with $45 million globally in just seven days of release. Written by Shaktimaan Singh and directed by Anil Sharma, Gadar 2 is a sequel to 2001 smash hit Gadar, which was set after the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan in the 1947-54 period. It revolved around the adventures of Tara Singh (Deol) and Sakeena (Ameesha Patel) and there was plenty of action set in Pakistan. Gadar 2 picks up the action in 1971 against the backdrop of the India-Pakistan war and features their son Charanjeet (Utkarsh Sharma).

The film is packing it in across India, particularly attracting the mass audience in Indias heartlands, who are arriving for screening after screening by tractors and trucks. People are dancing in the aisles while the songs are on, tickets are being sold in black, which has not happened, which I think in some 20-30 years ever since the advent of the multiplexes, Shariq Patel, chief business officer, Zee Studios, told Variety. Its a crazy, crazy phenomenon, its just mind boggling.

Inevitably, all eyes are now on the possibility of a Gadar 3. We have to get the story. It took Anil Sharma and Shaktimaan 20 years to find the story [of Gadar 2]. We find the story we go fast but I am assuring you nothing will be done just for making the money and encashing the brand to get that money and then kill the franchise and kill the brand, Patel said. This is a true sequel. Its on the lines of Top Gun: Maverick with the same character several years later, its not a franchise, were not creating a franchise, well have to create a sequel to it. Would I love to create a Tara Singh spinoff? Id love it. We have to figure out how to do that.

On the arthouse front, Zee Studios has been on a roll this year with Devashish Makhijas Joram selected at Rotterdam, Ashish Bendes Aatmapamphlet at Berlin and Anurag Kashyaps Kennedy at Cannes.

With the Sony-Zee merger finally approved, Patel has an eye on branding. Ive been toying with the idea of having multiple studio brands. I think its now time for us to have a different brand for Joram and Kennedy and a different brand for Gadar 2, Patel said. I think that brand architecture post this merger is surely somethings on my agenda depending on what the revised brand is called.

Patels idea is to create a brand for the films aimed at the mass audience like Gadar 2 and several films in the Punjabi and south Indian languages that Zee Studios is backing and another label for the arthouse or middle-of-the road films favored by multiplex audiences. While the merger was pending, Zee Studios did not greenlight any new films for a while, but now with the process nearing completion, that will resume. And on top of that list are massy films.

You just have to believe in the magic of cinema and I think that is what was increasingly getting lost, Patel says, adding that investment is required in Indias stagnating single-screen cinemas that specialize in attracting the mass audience.

Within the next two, three years if we continue making films, which is meant for that single-screen and making it unabashedly and making it for them rather than being apologetic about it, that has to stop. We all have been part of this problem. Weve created this issue for ourselves by being shy about it, Patel said, calling for a balance between the mass blockbusters and sensible cinema.