Remo D’Souza pushed his dance film for Salman Khan starrer Race 3.
Remo D’Souza, the director of upcoming action-thriller Race 3, by his own confession is a “big Salman Khan fan”. After choreographing Salman in Bajrangi Bhaijaan’s song “Selfie Le Le Re”, the choreographer-director expressed his wish of directing him in a movie and with Race 3 his wish has been granted. Not just Race 3, Remo will be directing the Sultan of Bollywood in his yet to be titled dance film as well. In an exclusive conversation with indianexpress.com, the filmmaker opened up about his experience of working with an ensemble cast in Race 3, directing a successful franchise film and signing Salman for a dance film.
With the announcement of Salman doing a dance film, many wondered what made the choreographer zero in on his name as the lead of his film. Answering the question, Remo said, “It’s (dance film) a beautiful script. For it, I wanted someone who is a great actor but at the same time can pull off dance steps as well. That’s why I cast him. It had to happen before Race 3 but because of Race we pushed that film later and we will do it after Race.” Salman, in his interview, mentioned that since it is taking him time to catch up with the dance steps for the film, he decided to do Race 3 first.
“We were supposed to a dance film together first but then I was not prepared for it. But I keep training for it. When I prepare for it, first my knees go, then my shoulders go and then back. So I am taking my time to do this film. In between, Ramesh (Taurani) ji came up with Race. Remo and I loved it and decided that dancing will take time, so let’s do Race first,” revealed Salman.
In Race 3 too, Salman Khan has moved away from his peculiar dance moves. But how did Remo make Salman, who is known to have two left feet, dance? “It’s the easiest job to make Salman Khan dance because he loves to dance. Just give him steps and he does it. This time it was him who wanted to dance and said that I just don’t want small signature steps. It was opposite this time. Instead of me telling him to dance, he was the one asking for more steps,” replied Remo.
Remo who is sure that Race 3 will stand out from the previously released versions of the film is both nervous and excited about the release of his film. He said, “I am a little bit nervous because there is Salman Khan and such a big cast in the movie and then the earlier installments of the franchise film have been done by Abbas Mustan. But I am excited as well and am very happy that the script has turned out to be good and the final product is amazing.”
Remo D’Souza with the cast of Race 3 including Salman Khan, Bobby Deol and Saqib Saleem.
Remo has stepped into the shoes of filmmakers Abbas-Mustan who have been no less than a phenomenon in the action-thriller genre. We asked Remo if he sat down with the helmers of Race and Race 2. He said, “I didn’t have a discussion with them but I had a concern about which I spoke to Ramesh ji and asked him if we have spoken to them because it has been their film. He told me that he has spoken to them and they are very chilled out about it and they’ve given me best wishes. They are happy about it.”
Talking about his experience of working on the multi-starrer, he added, “I would say this was not an easy film to pull off with such a huge cast, action, songs and scenes. It was a big task to pull it off but with the great team that I have, we could do this. The most difficult thing in the movie was to pull off the action because it was really larger than life.”
Lately, Bollywood has been producing a lot of sequels and remakes. So we asked Remo about this new wave in the industry. To this, the director said, “I think there is a recall value of these films. So, whenever we come up with a sequel, it is a good thing because they already know about the film, its genre and they are even waiting for it. So, it’s easier to make sequels.” Adding to it, he said, “But you cannot make sequels to all films. There are only a certain few which can have sequels. We can’t just have sequels for the sake of it. You have to have a good story or a continuation of the same thing.”
Now if Race 3 will make for a good sequel or not will be known on June 15 when it hits the theatres.