I plead guilty of saying that I would not make a Don sequel, but somehow the character just wouldn’t leave me. Now, in retrospect, I’m glad I’ve made Don 2,” admits producer-director Farhan Akhtar, who is gearing up for the response to the first trailer of one of this year’s most eagerly awaited films that unveils in theatres this Friday, along with the Farhan-starrer, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara.
Farhan’s partner and co-producer Ritesh Sidhwani endorses the fact that despite an open ending, the duo had not thought of taking the story forward when Don—The Chase Begins (2006) ended. He says, “But then Ameet (Mehta) and Amrish (Shah) came to us with an interesting story idea. It took us a while to develop it, but finally, last October, we flagged off Don 2, and on December 23, as Shah Rukh (Khan) says in the promos, the don will return to the screen after five years.”
Ritesh agrees that expectations are sky high, but is confident that the high-speed action sequences, the special effects and the familiar characters in a new European setting, will spark off an ‘Oh my God, this is huge!’ reaction from the audience,from children in particular, who, he admits, is Don’s biggest fan base. “It surprised me that my own kids had taken such a fancy to a bad guy till I realised that the eternal favourite, Tom & Jerry, is a violent cartoon too.”
The filmmakers adds that apart from two new characters, enacted by Lara Dutta and Kunal Kapoor, the others played by SRK, Priyanka Chopra, Boman Irani and Om Puri, are the same from Part 1 and continue from where they had left. Ritesh says, “So Roma knows that the good Vijay is dead, Don has survived and sets out to even the score,” he says. “That twist at the end of Part 1 was what made it different from Mr Bachchan’s (Amitabh) Don. This one is completely new and original with no reference points but you would have to see Don —The Chase Begins to understand what’s happening. Don is on its way to becoming a franchise now. This time if you were to ask me about a Part 3, I wouldn’t say no.”
