Farhad Samji recently talked about the grand scale of ‘Welcome to the Jungle’. He shared that the story needs a big cast, and producer Firoz Nadiadwala wants to go bigger. He also talked about how difficult it was to manage 35 actors at once, praised Akshay Kumar for maintaining a positive attitude despite some recent box-office flops, and giving his opinion on the debate about inflated box-office and budget numbers.
Why does Firoz Nadiadwala keep pushing more actors?
Speaking to Siddharth Kanan, Samji touched on the film’s unusually large cast, explaining that the script itself called for a large ensemble. He recalls, “The film is about a group of actors who arrive in a village. Even now, Firoz bhai (producer) is not satisfied with just 34 actors. He always says, ‘Bring more people. Make it bigger. We need scale.’ And the scale comes from the faces you see on the screen. He is very enthusiastic. He kept saying, ‘The audience will enjoy it,’ and that’s exactly what happened. In every frame, you have seven actors standing here, eight actors there, four more somewhere else. That has been one of the biggest USPs behind the success of Welcome.”
The script itself demands a large group
He added that the screenplay itself demanded a large cast, saying, “The script calls for 20 to 25 actors, along with the hero and heroine, all of whom come from this village. That’s how we approach casting.”
Samji in Akshay Kumar’s thinking
Samji also talked about Akshay Kumar’s mindset after some of his recent films didn’t do well. He said, “Akshay’s philosophy is simple: keep improving. I’ve never seen him sit and evaluate failures in the sense of becoming depressed or letting them affect him too much. Everyone wants every film to be a huge success, but that doesn’t always happen. I’ve never seen Akshay Kumar sitting there saying, ‘Oh s**t, what happened?’ He always said, ‘Move forward in life.I also learned something from him. He was a star, and he will always be a star.”
About ‘Welcome to the Jungle’
‘Welcome to the Jungle’ is the third film in the ‘Welcome’ series and has one of the biggest casts Bollywood has seen in recent times. Directed by Akshay Kumar, the film also stars Suniel Shetty, Paresh Rawal, Arshad Warsi, Tusshar KapoorShreyas Talpade, Rajpal Yadav, Jacqueline Fernandez, Disha PataniRaveena Tandon, Lara Dutta, Johnny Lever, Sanjay Dutt, Jackie Shroff and many more. Directed by Ahmed Khan, the comedy released in theaters on June 26.