Dharmendra turns 50, special film to celebrate

Special film to celebrate veteran actor’s five decades in Bollywood

While Bombay Talkies, an anthology film consisting of four short films by renowned directors such as Anurag Kashyap, Karan Johar, Zoya Akhtar and Dibakar Banerjee, recently commemorated 100 years of Indian cinema, another director Sangeeth Sivan is busy preparing to pay tribute to one of the finest actors Bollywood has seen.

The director’s next, titled Cheers, pays homage to Dharmendra and stars the veteran actor, along with his sons Sunny and Bobby Deol.

Sangeeth, who is also the director of Yamla Pagla Deewana 2 (YPD 2), which has the Deols in the lead, is a fan of Dharmendra himself and believes that the star deserves a film to celebrate his success in the industry. “Cheers is meant to commemorate Dharamji’s 50 years in the Hindi film industry. He has given many hits to the industry and has an immense fan-following even today. Dharamji deserves a film like that,” says Sangeeth.

The film will have bits of the actor’s life and his character is based on his own personality. “Dharamji’s character in Cheers will be similar to how he is in real life. Therefore, there is a lot of humour in the film. One cannot separate humour from Dharamji.”

However, Sangeeth says that the film will not be a biopic. “The film has bits of his life but is not completely biographical. It is a unique concept and will interest and entertain everyone,” says the director.

Sangeeth also reveals that work on the film was supposed to start even before YMP 2. He says, “I was planning to do a tribute for Dharamji for quite a long time. In fact, Cheers was supposed to happen even before YPD 2 since the latter was offered to me much later. We have already written the film and will start shooting for it after the release of YPD 2.”