Akshay Kumar seems to be leaving no stone unturned to make his upcoming movie Patiala House as eyeball- grabbing as possible. So apart from the huge starcast which the film already boasts of, the audience will also get to see some unlikely non-Bollywood celebrities!
Akshay, who plays a cricketer in this Nikhil Advani venture, will be seen playing cricket opposite former and current faces like Nasir Hussain, Brendon McCullum, Herschelle Gibbs, Kieron Pollard, Andrews Symonds, Kamran Akmal, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Graham Gooch, Wasim Akram, Matthew Hayden among others. Advani, who wanted to make this movie look pretty authentic, suggested the inclusion of actual cricketers which was agreed upon by producer Bhushan Kumar. Bhushan says, “In the film, Akshay is playing for England and it is the World Cup that they are playing for. So it needed to have a lot of known faces to be seen with Akshay. Then we approached these players, sent them the script and got them on board.”
Akshay himself was pretty excited about this fact. Talking about this at a music launch where BollySpice was present, Akki seemed overwhelmed by the fact that he actually got to play at the renowned Oval stadium and bowl for such well known players. Talking about how he, like a normal Indian, is obsessed about cricket, he said, “Even right now I am worried about what is the score at the India-SA match. Does anyone know what the score is?” With the banter that followed regarding the score, he couldn’t refrain himself from pulling the legs of some reporters who seemed to be making some incorrect predictions. Talks of cricket led to a reporter asking him about how he sees his cricket based movie working when most Bollywood movies centered around this theme – barring Lagaan and Iqbal – have not done well. To which he replied, “Patiala House is not a movie based on cricket. It is about the conflict between a father and son. It just has the backdrop as cricket since Gattu (Akshay’s character) is a cricketer. He could even have been a shopkeeper. It’s basically about the problems which arise due to the generation gap.”
Whether the movie works or not is something we will know only in Feb 11th because that is when the movie is scheduled to hit theaters. But we are sure that for Akshay, it has brought some pretty memorable experiences.
You can catch more of Akshay’s comments regarding his latest movie Patiala House at our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/bollyspicemag.
