Vishal Bhardwaj reveals Prime Video dropped his Kandahar hijacking project after Tandav: ‘They were paranoid, wanted nothing political’

Vishal Bhardwaj talks about his doomed projects -- from the 1999 Kandahar hijacking, Osama Bin Laden movie to the debut film that never could happen.

By: Entertainment Desk

Mumbai | December 17, 2023 06:35 PM IST

3 min read

Vishal Bhardwaj talks about his shelved projects. (Photo: Vishal Bhardwaj/Instagram)

Filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj worked on a project for 8 years, but it was shelved instantly due to an unrelated other show. The maker has revealed that his project on the 1999 hijacking of the Indian Airlines flight IC 814 was dropped by Amazon Prime Video, after the streamer got cold feet following the controversy of their show, Tandav.

Tandav, helmed by Ali Abbas Zafar, had found itself in the middle of a political storm upon its release in 2021, with threats, FIRs, censorship and an eventual apology being part of the entire saga.

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The reaction to the show was so severe, Prime Video “pulled the plug” on the IC814 project as well fearing another controversy. In an interview with Mid-day, Bhardwaj said, “At one point I was working on IC814 hijack project. I worked on that for 7-8 years. I was making it for Amazon, but after Tandav, they pulled the plug saying the don’t want to do anything political. I don’t think it was political, the whole country was humiliated, it had got nothing to do with any political party. But they were so paranoid, they still are, that they didn’t want to touch anything political.”

The filmmaker revealed that another project that got shelved due to the same reason was his ambitious screen adaptation of Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark’s book, The Exile: The Flight of Osama Bin Laden. “Osama is shelved. It was a fantastic script, but again, nobody is interested,” he added.

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During the conversation Vishal Bhardwaj revealed that he was supposed to make his directorial debut with a film called Barf, about an Indian and a Pakistani soldier trapped in the Himalayas together.

“It was before No Mans Land released! A girl from the Indian Army and a Pakistani Major. He is wounded, she is lost. He knows the way, and she can keep him alive. Now, they have to get out of there. It is not a love story! They both had their respective lovers in their country. It was a very good story. If made today, I will be called anti-national, will be asked to go to Pakistan!” he said.

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