Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra to do away with intermissions in his films, starting with his next

Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra is all set to change the very format of the Hindi films.

The filmmaker has decided to do away with the age-old intermission that divides all our films into two halves. His next film Run Milkha Run based on the life of sprinter Milkha Singh as well as his films in the future will have none of what Mehra calls the "artificial divide".

Mehra, it should be remembered, had the guts to change the ending of his film Delhi 6 for a DVD version of the film because a "happy" ending had been forced on him during the film's theatrical release.

Artificial division

Says the visionary director, "There needs to be a paradigm shift in the way we format our films. Let's do away with the pre-interval and post-interval halves. This tradition goes back to the theatre culture and various acts in the musicals and traditional plays.

Let's not have an artificial division of films just because the multiplexes want to sell samosas and French fries. If we have to export our cinema globally then do away with an artificial break. Films in the West don't have intervals forced into them. Why should we not ape them in this matter when we're so eager to ape the West in everything else?"

Ideal choice

Milkha Singh and Amitabh Bachchan both think Akshay Kumar is the right person to play the athlete. And Rakeysh Mehra is not averse to the idea. "It could be Akshay. Ideally I'd love to cast an unknown face.

The finances don't allow me to cast a newcomer as Milkha. I am at the moment scripting the film. It's taking longer than I thought. I am grappling with the final draft. Basically I need to get that in place. The budget too would be very high, no doubt about it."