Even before the release of ‘Commando’ starring Vidyut Jammwal, Pooja Chopra and Jaideep Ahlawat, producers Vipul Amrutlal Shah and Reliance Entertainment had mutually decided to go ahead with at least 3 Commando film series. As the first installment of the film series – ‘Commando’ completes 8 years today, Vipul Shah is ecstatic to make the fourth installment of the successful franchise. Vipul Shah takes a trip down memory lane as he recollects working on Commando. “When I saw the first audition tape of Vidyut, we were looking for a villain for the movie, ‘Force’. Just looking at the tape, I had decided that we will cast him in ‘Force’ as a villain but we will actually make him an action hero because he is exceptionally talented. And it’s been a terrific journey since then. Shooting ‘Commando’ was a very big challenge because we wanted to make an action film and action films always require budget. We wanted to shoot in the jungles of Himachal Pradesh. It was a difficult film to put together. I worked on the movie for almost one year before Reliance came on board as a partner and we had decided at that time that we are going to go ahead with at least 3 Commando films and I am glad that now we are going ahead to make the fourth one, so the target has been well achieved. Two people in Reliance were very important in this entire process – Preeti Sahani and Shibasish Sarkar who made this happen. It was a great team effort between all of us and we are glad that we are talking about ‘Commando 4’ and taking the franchise to a new level.” “Also, the fact that the movie saw an interesting villain in Jaideep Ahlawat, who we have seen doing some amazing performances lately. He became such a terrific adversary for Vidyut that they both set the screen alive, and of course the film had the debutant Pooja Chopra and music director Mannan Shah. One of the key elements of the film which gave it the required look and feel was my DOP – Sejal Shah. I give him a huge credit for the way the film looks and the way the scale was achieved is largely due to him. So overall we had a terrific team and terrific environment in which we shot the film. It was really challenging but great fun and that shows on the screen,” adds the successful producer. Vipul Shah is currently working on two ambitious and contrasting projects simultaneously – a medical thriller titled ‘Human’ (web show) and ‘Sanak’ (movie), While ‘Human’ is an emotional drama about the underbelly of the human drug testing and the world of medical scam, ‘Sanak’ is an intense, emotional, action film.
