Director Ahmed Khan has spoken about the making of his directorial Welcome To The Junglerevealing how he handled everything from a cast of over 30 actors to taking over one of Bollywood’s most beloved comedy franchises.
The film has done quite well at a time when getting audiences to show up for a comedy is genuinely hard.
Related: Raveena Tandon says ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ prioritises comedy over ‘rationality’
Reflecting on why it connected the way it did, the 52-year-old filmmaker said, “Making people laugh is one of the hardest things as everyone has a different taste in comedy. We just kept one thing in mind that we will not delve into vulgarity, we won’t make demeaning jokes or do slapstick comedy. We went for the age group of 5 to 95, and it worked for us.”
One of the film’s talking points has been getting Akshay Kumar and Raveena Tandon back on screen together after decades.
Ahmed simply explained it as, Akshay was already attached to the project, and I had always had Raveena in mind for a specific character, a strong village woman.
He said, “I told Raveena that you and Akshay haven’t done a film together in years and both of them are very close friends of mine. They thought ki ab sab itna aage badh chuke hain ki kabhi na kabhi to kuch karna hi tha saath mein. So for the public’s sake and for them to enjoy it, they did it. Whatever they did though, was in the film’s context, it’s the audience who found their own take on it.”
How he overcame the challenge of handling more than 30 actors without making any of them feel like they were just filling up space.
He revealed, “I bifurcated them in mandlis of actors, crews, villagers and villains. Putting them together became easy after that. Also, I didn’t give individual scenes to anyone. Every scene had almost all of them reacting to the same situation, so no one was left out.”
Taking over a franchise built by Anees Bazmee was never going to be simple, and Ahmed did not pretend otherwise.
He further said,”Anees bhai’s flavour of humour is very different. He is a writer, I am not. His humour starts from his pen, mine comes on the camera straightaway. Welcome was always known for that niche Dubai, black suits, and glamour. I completely changed the palette and went neutral. I kept everybody in one uniform, so there was no hierarchy.
I gave it a sepia tone, which is quite different from comedy films’ setting which is usually loud and colourful. I made a very serious looking comedy film. The action director in me also creeped up a little in that,” he added, laughing.
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