“Badhaai Ho, you have tested Negative,” I pun-joked with filmmaker Amit Sharma whose new ambitious venture Maidaan promises to do for football what Lagaan did for cricket and Chak De for hockey. Amit who has now fully recovered from COVID laughs nervously. “The idea is to do my best. We have invited football players from all across the world to come and play in our matches for Maidaan: Japan, South Korea, France, Thailand… there is some problem getting Australian players to come to India because the country is under lockdown.”
A series of matches will now be shot for Maidaan showing India playing football with different countries. Informs Amit, “In fact, the players from Thailand are already here. They have been waiting for me to recover from COVID. We start shooting them on April 4. We then go on to shoot matches with the other countries with a break between every match. It is a tough schedule. We were supposed to start shooting on March 16. But then who we would have thought I would be felled with COVID like this?”
Amit says the football matches will be shot on an international scale. “There will be no compromise on quality. We are trying to make a film that we hope India will be proud of. When I directed Badhaai Ho I never set out to make something that would have such an impact on the audience. I am so glad all the actors in Badhaai Ho specially Neenaji (Gupta) benefited from it.”
Image source: Instagram/iamitrsharma, SpotboyE archives