MUMBAI :Aditya Dhar’s purported epic seems to have been finally shelved. It was meant to be the Uri team producer Ronnie Screwvala and the director’s ambitious follow-up film. Budgeted at almost 200 crores, The Immortal Ashwatthama has become a victim of its own ambitions.

Having made a war epic Uri that had the look and feel of a project far more costly than its actual budget, the same producer Ronnie Screwvala announced The Immortal Ashwatthama hoping director Dhar would pull off another modestly-budgeted epic. However, after the huge success of Uri the project went West, and than to waste.

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A source in the know spills the shocking beans. Director Aditya Dhar had made the war epic Uri for a mere 25 crores though it looked like a 100 crore budgeted film. That’s because Aditya comes from the less-is-more school of filmmaking.

Explaining his tight budgetary vision Aditya Dhar had told me in an earlier interview, “We worked under extremely tight budgetary circumstances in Uri ,and that was good. Because it kept us constantly on our toes, forever anxious. I think anxiety is a big impetus to productivity and creativity.I fear unlimited budgets would make me lazy as a filmmaker.I’d rather work within controlled budgets. My aim as a filmmaker is to make a film look large, far more spectacular than the budget would suggest. I’d like to spend 30 crores. But it should look like a 150 crore film.”

About The Immortal Ashwatthama, Aditya had said, “It will be a completely different world from the one in Uri. But still in the real space, yes, it is again based on a true-life event. And that’s all I can tell you. And of course, I can also tell you that my next film too will be produced by Ronnie Screwvala’s RSVP production house. The way Ronnie, and for that matter Vicky Kaushal, stood by Uri and believed in it, I’d be foolish to change my priorities.”

Rather than lose more money, VIP’s Ronnie Screwvala decided to put the project to sleep.

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Finally after being shelved by Screwvala, the project was revived by Jio Studios. But they wanted a hero larger than Vicky Kaushal or Ranveer Singh. Dhar wanted his Uri hero Kaushal. When that was unacceptable to Jio Studios, they considered Ranveer Singh.

The latest one hears on this front is that Pushpa superstar Allu Arjun, who was approached to play the lead has also said no after hearing of the proposed film’s troubled history.

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Credits - koimoi