Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri’s upcoming film ‘The Vaccine War’ has always been in the headlines ever since its announcement. As the film has created a lot of chatter about the pathbreaking story that will be a tribute to the endless support and dedication of the medical fraternity and scientists, the filmmaker has also kept the audience’s excitement about the film at the edge by bringing the progress of its shooting schedules and now good news for the fans has arrived as the film has wrapped up its final schedule.
We got more involved with the film over time and the kind of news updates we received in the form of star cast portraying in the film. Veteran names like Nana Patekar, Pallavi Joshi, and Anupam Kher while the new age sensation Kantara actress Sapthami Gowda is also a part of the film.
Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri has always brought his vision of creating a change in society and bringing reality to the audience on the screens, and The Vaccine War is one such project from the filmmaker that will open many stories about the pandemic era. The filmmaker has started his journey of structuring the film by commencing the shoot in Lucknow. With his sheer belief in the story, Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri shot the film around different places and now the film has been wrapped in Hyderabad.
Producer and actor Pallavi Joshi says, “The Vaccine War is unlike any other film that we have ever done under ‘I Am Buddha’ productions. Science thriller is a very new genre and it’s a very difficult genre but we decided to accept the challenge. I think 100℅ marks should go to Vivek for accepting this challenge of writing and directing this film.
All the actors – Nana Patekar, Nivedita Bhattacharya, Sapthami Gowda, Girija Oak, Yagya Turlapathi and myself, we found ourselves in completely alien territory because the scientific terminologies that we had to use in his film were so difficult and something that we had never heard of in life.
So saying them became a challenge for us in the beginning but within a week I think we all found the scientist within us and we were speaking all the scientific terminologies as if we were born speaking them. It was a great sight to see all of us transform into very confident scientists and after the end of the shoot, we were all only discussing science which was a very hilarious thing to happen because until before the film began none of us knew any ABC about science whatsoever.
Our technical team was most under stress because this film was shot very differently, technically it is a very different film.
Vivek and our technical crew had set some impossible targets for themselves and I am really waiting, biting my nails every now and then because I want to know what the end result is.
But one thing is for sure that once the audience sees the film and walks out of the theatre they are going to walk out with their head held high.
What our scientists have achieved during the period of lockdown when the pandemic had hit the world and especially the women who were not just working at home cleaning the house, cooking meals for the family but they were also standing in the labs for 16, 17 & 18 hours at length and making that vaccine which saved the country of 135 crore people.
What was the most difficult was the fact that here we were not playing the fictitious characters we are playing real people and those real people are still there. This is not about a history that happened a hundred years ago. The people who invented the vaccine, the people who manufactured the vaccine, people who ensured that every single person gets the vaccine are all living with us, within us, and portraying them using their real names, picking up on the characteristics based on what we have seen in the interviews and having spoken to them was the most difficult part because it is very difficult to play a living character but I think all the actors did a wonderful job and again the technical team and entire crew was so supportive and was so helpful that a point came where we completely forgot that we are Pallavi Joshi or Nivedita Bhattacharya or Nana Patekar or whoever it may be and we became Dr.Balram Bhargav, Dr.Nivedita Gupta and Dr.Priya Ibrahim and so on and so forth. So just waiting with bated breath for the cinema to hit the screens. Accepting new challenges has always been the motto of ‘I Am Buddha’ productions and I think with The Vaccine War we have just set very new standards for ourselves. Sometimes it’s a little scary but it’s also extremely satisfying.”
Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri has shared before that it took around one year to research the subject and present the correct facts to the audience. The story of the film is written on 3200 pages and 82 people worked on the story day and night. For conducting efficient research, the team met the real scientists and people who developed the vaccine. The film is all about, how difficult and pressure it is for Indian scientists always from foreign countries and medical world overall.
While Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri’s The Kashmir Files is on a content spree of collecting recognition becoming an all-time blockbuster and people’s most-loved film , the filmmaker has started working on his next, The Vaccine War is scheduled to release on 15th August 2023, Independence Day, and interestingly it will be released in 10 plus languages including Hindi, English, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, and Bengali. The film is produced by Pallavi Joshi under the banner ‘I Am Buddha foundation’, which is a completely independent film production house that has nothing to do with the so-called Bollywood lobby.
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