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The prolific filmmaker of some of Bollywood's iconic love stories, Imtiaz Ali is ready with his next film, Main Vaapas Aaunga. Before the release of the Hindi
film on June 12, the director spoke to us about his past feature films, including one that didn't work, Love Aaj Kal 2. The romantic drama starred Kartik Aaryan, Sara Ali Khan, Randeep Hooda and Arushi Sharma; it was released in theatres on February 14, 2020. The spiritual sequel received mixed reviews and was a miss at the box office after COVID-19 hit the world in March 2020. Imtiaz revealed why he's not excited to make sequels just for the box office.
Imtiaz Ali looks back at why Love Aaj Kal 2 didn't work
In an interview with Zoom, when Imtiaz was asked about making Jab We Met 2, possibly with the leads of Main Vaapas Aaunga, Vedang Raina and Sharvari, he shared, "Actually, it is not exciting to do a story for the reason that it's a commercially viable thing. That's a wrong way to start something. So I don't want to do that. Unless there is something that is really pulling me to make a movie, a second part of a movie... something just comes like that. But I'm not really keen to explore a part two just for the heck of it."
The filmmaker also got candid on why the Hindi romance that followed up the 2009 film failed. He reminisced, "In Love Aaj Kal 2, I did that because I already had the story and I was excited about it. It didn't work is a different matter. Love Aaj Kal 2 also told me that this is a useless experiment because it's not even a viable project... if you don't want to make it. Love Aaj Kal 2 was a story in itself. I could have made a different story. There was a time when I was thinking about making a different story and not calling it Love Aaj Kal. I was calling it Reverse. But later on, it was decided that maybe it would be better to call it Love Aaj Kal 2, which was not a big service to the film."
More about Main Vaapas Aaunga
The Hindi film is partly a period drama, as it features Vedang and Sharvari in a love story set in the Partition era. Imtiaz reunites with Diljit Dosanjh again after the Netflix musical Amar Singh Chamkila.
Naseeruddin Shah plays the older version of Vedang's character, while Diljit plays his grandson. The music of the film is composed by AR Rahman and the lyrics are penned by Irshad Kamil.
