Govind Nihalani is giving the final touches to the script of the sequel of his '80s police drama Ardh Satya. The highly-acclaimed film starred Om Puri, Amrish Puri, Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah and Sadashiv Amrapurkar.
Considering that a plethora of cop dramas doing well at the box office in the recent past, the makers had expressed a desire to revisit Ardh Satya that took a look at a cop struggling with the wrongs around him. Nihalani had made an announcement last year that he was keen to revisit the story three decades later.
Says Nihalani, `By August, I should be ready with the script. My greatest dilemma was whether to continue the story forward with the same actors or just take the idea and remake it with a new cast. I think we have managed to strike a balance.`
Ardh Satya was produced by Manmohan Shetty and it was his idea to make a sequel. `He expressed a desire and after thinking for quite a while, we decided to finally take the story forward, ` says Nihalani.
Though there has been buzz that he has been sounding out some of the cast members of the first outing, Nihalani maintains, `Once the script is ready I will start the casting. But I would like to have Om Puri take the story forward. Naseer's character died in the film so he will have to take on a new persona.`
Incidentally, Nihalani's last B-Town outing was the Amitabh Bachchan-Kareena Kapoor-Fardeen Khan starrer Dev in 2004. He admits, `It's been a while since I made a film but I was busy with an animation film which will release around December. It was a great learning experience exploring the animation genre.`
