Dutt and Gupta met on the sets of 'Thanedar' and became friends. Dutt gave a break to Gupta with 'Aatish' after which they both worked together in several films. Subsequently, they formed a production company White Feather Films but had a fall-out during the making of 'Shootout At Lokhandwala' in 2007.
"I am missing Sanjay Dutt for every role," Gupta told reporters here last evening at the music launch of 'Shootout at Wadala', a prequel to 'Lokhandwala'. Dutt terminated his professional and personal partnership with Gupta in 2007 amid allegations of financial bungling within the production company they had partnered since 2001.
The fallout was so bitter that in an interview, Gupta had reportedly said that he would never be friends with Dutt in this life. To which Dutt had replied, Why only this life...We can't be friends in any of my future lives." But Dutt and Gupta patched up at Amitabh Bachchan's 70th birthday bash last year.
Dutt played an uber cool gangster in many of Gupta's films like 'Khauff', 'Kaante', 'Musafir', 'Dus Kahaniyaan', which earned him the tag of the 'Deadly Dutt'.
Now the filmmaker is gearing up for the release of 'Shootout at Wadala' which will dramatise the first encounter by Mumbai police, where gangster Manya Surve (played by John Abraham) was shot dead in 1982 at Wadala. "We have taken a lot of initiative and made it an action film," he said.