I am new to working with stars: Milan Luthria

Filmmaker Milan Luthria, who also directed Once Upon a Time in Mumbai, is currently working on its sequel and claims to have started another trend with the film.

“Once Upon... has set a trend of how films were during the 70s and 80s. Many more films in the next 18 months (after the film’s release) were made with the same look and feel,” he said, adding that it is a big problem to recreate the environment of the 70s and 80s in India.

“It’s like a death wish! There are so many things and you have to take care of the minutest details. The clothing, the kind of roads, phones... everything has to reflect the time period and I can assure you, its not easy.” Luthria is working with an entirely new star cast in the sequel and says the idea behind casting new people was to justify the time gap between the two films. “There is a time lapse between the films. In the first flick, Emraan (Hashmi) did the younger version of Shoaib. In the sequel, Shoaib is in his early forties and that’s why I roped in Akshay Kumar. I also wanted to show the moral dilemma between the younger Shoaib and the older one.”

The film also stars Imran Khan and Sonakshi Sinha and Luthria says it took him time to get comfortable with all the three actors.

“Akshay has been in the film industry for a while now as compared to Imran and Sonakshi. Sitting with them and discussing the film was a bit tricky in the beginning. I am very new to this concept of working with stars so it took time for the chemistry to build. But thankfully, it did build and working with them was amazing,” Milan said.

Luthria feels that he has also started the trend of getting heroines back as protagonists. “With Dirty Picture, I think, I have brought back the era where the plot of a film revolved around the heroine,” he says.