Sherni: Call of the wild for Vidya Balan

The shoot of Vidya Balan's Sherni had come to an abrupt halt in mid-March as the country went under a lockdown to curb the spread of the pandemic. Almost five months later, the Amit Masurkar-led team is steadily charting out a plan to take the movie on floors by the first week of October.

"The next location is Balaghat; we will be filming in the jungles of Madhya Pradesh. The safety of the cast and crew is key, which is why we have waited for so many months to resume work. The number of cases is reducing, but the nature of the menace is such that we need to have our guards up," explains producer Vikram Malhotra, adding that about 65 per cent of the shoot is remaining. The makers have procured the necessary permission to conduct an extensive schedule in the state. "The authorities facilitating production in Madhya Pradesh have assured me that the area is safe to shoot in. Internally, we will follow the strictest guidelines of health and safety."

Amit Masurkar

If things had gone as per the original plan, the social drama would have been wrapped up by May. The producer recounts how three weeks into their first schedule in Bhopal, the team had to be hurriedly brought back to Mumbai. "In the early days of the crisis, we had little information on how to practise safety measures. As the producer, the first thing we did was to protect the daily-wage workers in the unit. We made sure there was no income displacement. Everyone on contract was paid till the first week of May."

On her part, Balan — who reportedly plays a forest officer keen on resolving the man-animal conflict — is raring to go back to work. Emphasising that she has been home-bound for almost five months, she says, "I am excited, not scared. Fear won't help much, all we can do is be as careful as possible and move forward."

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