Sanjay Puran Singh, the debutant director of the critically acclaimed Lahore, is planning a sci-fi next and wants to shoot portions of it in NASA, Singapore and China. At the moment, he’s still working on the script, along with two co-writers, and promises to come up with an SFX adventure that will go beyond anything even Hollywood has attempted in the past.
“May be I’ll make it in 3D for greater impact. My film will definitely have some big Hollywood names. I hope to go on the floors with it by November or December,” informs Singh, the rights of whose Lahore has been picked up by Hollywood Gang, producers of films like 300, for an English remake. “In a couple of months, I should know whether I’ll be directing the English film too.”
Meanwhile, Singh was at the Houston Film Festival last month where his film was being screened on May 20 and 21. The first screening of Lahore drew only Indians and Pakistanis but following word-of-mouth publicity, the show, the next day, was crowded with people od all ethnicities. The film went on to be adjudged Best Film, picking up a special jury award. At one of these shows in Houston, Singh met the Consulate General of India, Sanjeev Arora, who got him a special ‘out-of-turn’ permission to visit NASA.
“I went into areas not accessible to regular visitors, have spoken to astronauts there about the effects of zero gravity in outer space and their training procedures, and also got to see the Apollo 15 Lunar Module Falcon from up close,” says an excited Singh, a sci-fi buff who’s grown up with the dream of visiting NASA.
{{/usCountry}}“I went into areas not accessible to regular visitors, have spoken to astronauts there about the effects of zero gravity in outer space and their training procedures, and also got to see the Apollo 15 Lunar Module Falcon from up close,” says an excited Singh, a sci-fi buff who’s grown up with the dream of visiting NASA.
{{/usCountry}}He plans to return to this “mesmerising world populated by real super heroes” next month with his crew. “I intend to film there, and also in Singapore and Beijing,” he asserts. May be the American Space Research Centre is no longer out-of-bounds to him, but Beijing is harder to penetrate.
“If I could get permission to shoot in Pakistan, despite initial denials, then I’m sure I can follow Steven Spielberg to Beijing too,” Singh says confidently. “It is integral for me to shoot in China and I don’t want to fake it by filming in Hong Kong.”