by Subhash K Jha
Right after Madhur Bhandarkar completes shooting Corporate, the director intends to go to the last
film in his proposed trilogy on the metro-centric lifestyles.
The film will go on the floors immediately after Corporate . "I've done just a few days of shooting for
Corporate. But I feel I've already shot the entire film. It's all worked out on my head. And the cast is
so good—that's half the battle. K.K. Menon has shaped into one of our finest actors. And you've to
see Bipasha in my film. She will shock and surprise all her critics."
"Sammir Dattani and Minissha Lamba are also very talented youngsters. Minissha showed sparks
in her first film (Yahan). But Sammir will surprise audiences completely. I feel a lot of careers will
take off in unexpected ways after Corporate."
He's just shot a schedule in Malad (outskirts of Mumbai) where the set within a corporate
organization looks so convincing, you wonder which came first, entrepreneurship or movies about
entrepreneurs.
Madhur laughs. "There haven't been too many films on the corporate world. I can only remember
Shyam Benegal's Kalyug which was amazing. What a cast Shyam Babu had! I'd like to think my
cast would also make Corporate special...I've got known and unknown faces. It's an eclectic
mix."
He then gets excited about Signal. "It's the third part of my trilogy. Page 3 was about the world of
party-hoppers. Corporate is about the business world. Signal will take my cinema into the underbelly
of Mumbai...those people whom we see at the traffic signals...the newspapers hawkers, the fruit and
flower sellers, the beggars and eunuchs...where do they come from..where do they go?"
The film will have only new faces in the cast. "It has to be like that, no?" reasons Madhur. "You
can't have known faces playing these anonymous creatures who appear and vanish when we stop
our cars at the traffic signals."
Madhur wants to film this hardcore-reality tale immediately after Corporate is complete in early
2006. "I've got to get it out of my system before I move to something else."
Madhur is the second director to attempt a trilogy of films. Deepa Mehta has just completed her
elmental trilogy Fire , Earth and Water.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005 16:30 IST