Amit Sharma on his next Maidaan: “It’s not a clichéd sports film”

After the humongous success of his last directorial venture Badhaai Ho (2018), filmmaker Amit Sharma is presently busy with his next Maidaan. Produced by Boney Kapoor in association with ZEE Studios and Chrome Pictures, Maidaan is a sports biopic based on the life of legendary football coach Syed Abdul Rahim.

The biopic stars superstar Ajay Devgn in the role of Syed Abdul Rahim. Sharing the screen space with him will be popular South Indian actress Keerthy Suresh, who recently bagged the prestigious National Film Award for her exceptional portrayal of iconic actress Savitri in Tamil film Mahanati (2018). She is set to make her Bollywood debut with Maidaan.

Talking about the film, Amit Sharma told a newswire, "It is a story of a person who has done a lot. I am not calling it a biopic, I am calling it the golden era of Indian football. The film is about that. So the challenge is how to make this in the best way.”

Adding further, the filmmaker said that though it is a sports biopic, it will not enter the cliché zone. "The scale is bigger, football is there, sports is there, but it won't be going in the cliché zone. We are trying to give it a fresh perspective. That's the challenge," he added.

Amit, who is happy that his film Badhaai Ho received two National Awards recently, said that he plans to direct and produce more films under his banner. "I will be producing and directing more films through my banner. When you get a National Award for the first film you produce, the challenge is to make sure whatever comes out next from here should also be amazing. It can't be that we will make anything just because Badhaai Ho was a hit. No, it doesn't work like that. Even if I am not directing and only producing with my partners, it has to be something which is talked about,” he concluded.