Mumbai Nov 28 Filmmaker Shekhar Kapur and Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, while in a session held at IFFI 2025, spoke intensively about Kapur's highly anticipated and much delayed movie 'Paani'.
When IANS questioned Shekhar Kapur over the movie and the possibility of it being made, the filmmaker said, “A film has its own will too. I am not the only decision-maker. A film, in itself, becomes a decision-maker.”
He added, “Sometimes the film tells me, 'You have to stop everything else and make this', and I simply follow that. So when you ask that question, you should ask the film as well — "Bhaiya, tum kab banogi?"
Adding more to Shekhar Kapur's answer, Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra said, “Paani is being made. When a writer and a director, or in this case both, like Shekhar Kapur, start creating it, he’s already making it by writing and shaping it. Whether it will be made physically is a separate matter, but creatively, he’s already making and remaking it many times.”
He added, “And as he said, when something is meant to happen, it happens. We have been told this many times.” Talking about Paani, the movie has been one of Bollywood’s most talked-about unmade films that has been doing the rounds for more than a decade. Shekhar Kapur had first developed the script around the years 2010–2011.
For years, the film faced multiple stages of pre-production with different studios showing interest and getting involved to an extent, but somehow nothing materialised. Kapur's project gained a lot of attention when late Bollywood star Sushant Singh Rajput was cast as the lead. Sushant, back then, had trained extensively for the film and reportedly was working on fitness, acting workshops, and even studying the world the story was set in to fit into the shoes of his character well.
However, much to his dismay, the production of the movie was stalled due to creative and financial disagreements between Shekhar Kapur and the producing studio at the time. After many delays, the project was somehow never revived in the same capacity. Sushant Singh Rajput’s shocking demise further pushed the project even more.
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