Players (2012)

Interesting facts

• Based on: The Italian Job and The Italian Job
• Filmed in: New Zealand and Murmansk Oblast

Players is a 2012 Indian Hindi-language action thriller film directed by the duo Abbas–Mustan and jointly produced by Viacom18 Motion Pictures and Burmawala Partners. The film features an ensemble cast of Vinod Khanna, Abhishek Bachchan, Bobby Deol, Sonam Kapoor, Bipasha Basu, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Sikandar Kher and Omi Vaidya, while Aftab Shivdasani appears in a cameo. The theatrical trailer premiered on 3 November 2011, and the film was released on 6 January 2012. It is an official remake of The Italian Job, and is the second remake of the 1969 British film after the 2003 American remake of the same name.

Production

Development on the project began in late 2009, when Viacom 18 approached Abbas–Mustan with the idea of remaking The Italian Job into a desi Indian version, and bought the remake rights from the original producers Paramount Pictures. At first, Abbas–Mustan were hesitant, but after watching the 2003 remake of The Italian Job, they decided it would be a good idea to Indianise it.

Abhishek Bachchan was the first actor to be signed, along with Katrina Kaif and Neil Nitin Mukesh, to play the roles originally played by Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron and Edward Norton in the 2003 American remake. Mukesh was approached for the negative role, as the directors were impressed by his performance in Johnny Gaddaar (2007).

At one point the film had no three male leads and no female lead, which caused the directors to panic, after Kaif also backed out due to date problems. As the directors wanted a younger girl she was eventually replaced by Sonam Kapoor. Kapoor walked out of the film, as the director she was working with on another film, Mausam, asked to concentrate solely on his film.

Rumours circulated that Mukesh had been dropped, due to the poor commercial business of his Lafangey Parindey (2010), although it had been a profitable venture. He later slammed the rumours saying "Arrey issme real ya unreal status ki kya baat hai? (There is no question of real and unreal status) It's sad that I am giving clarification on this when the fact is that I am already preparing for my role.

It was Abbas Mustan's first time working with all the actors except for Basu and Deol, who they had previously cast together in Ajnabee. The latter in five films, along with Johnny Lever who has played minor roles in all but two of their films. It was also the second pairing of Bachchan and Kapoor, who reunited after Delhi-6 (2009).

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.