'We had two action superstars, we had to set benchmark': Sid Anand on first anniversary of 'WAR'

As Hrithik Roshan's 'War' completes one year of release, director Siddharth Anand reveals that Aditya Chopra and he had set out to achieve a new benchmark for action spectacles in India with the film.

"When we started out, the script of WAR was being written, I was writing it like an English film. It didn't have songs, its language was very new. When I say language, I don't mean spoken language, it is the language of the film, the way scenes unfold," he said.

"The content of each scene, the way the screenplay unfolds, it was a little complex in terms of the timeline and the way things were moving, it was like a relentless thriller. I didn't know what the palette of the audience would be in 2 years to the time the film releases, to keep up with the current trends, the evolving taste of the audience," he added.

He further went on to talk about the casting of the film and dubbed it as his "dream cast."

"When the film was cast, it had Hrithik and Tiger - the casting was just through the roof! It was a dream cast and we weren't expecting two superstars coming together! Nowadays to get one actor on a film is so tough, and to get two superstars was like a dream. So, naturally, the expectations of the film went high," he said.

Siddharth has been known to give something new to audiences through his cinema. From 'Salaam Namaste,' to 'Ta Ra Rum Pum,' and 'WAR', the director has shown that he is an extremely ambitious film-maker who wants to bring forth newness on screen.

"The fact that we got two action superstars, we had to set a benchmark. When I started making action films, I started in 2012, I just knew that there is no benchmark or template for me in India. Because I don't think we make many action films or good action films in India. I wanted to beat my own expectations of what I've achieved in the previous action films," he said.

"My competition was the action in Bang Bang! There was very new, very radical stuff that we did in Bang Bang! and I was competing with that and wanted to give audiences a little more than that, and I ended up giving them a whole lot more with WAR," the filmmaker added.

'WAR' came out to be one of the highest-grossing films of 2019. It stars Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff in the lead.

( With inputs from ANI )

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