Vishal Bhardwaj’s upcoming crime thriller O Romeo, starring Shahid Kapoor and Triptii Dimri, has run into legal trouble ahead of its release. The daughter of real-life gangster Hussain Ustra has filed
a lawsuit against the makers, claiming the film shows her father without the family’s permission. She has demanded Rs 2 crore in damages from the team, including Bhardwaj and Nadiadwala Grandson Entertainment. The film is inspired by a chapter from Hussain Zaidi’s 2011 book Mafia Queens of Mumbai. The same book earlier served as the base for Gangubai Kathiawadi. The chapter looks at the underworld links between Hussain Ustra, Sapna Didi, and Dawood Ibrahim in the 1990s. In O Romeo, Triptii Dimri plays Sapna Didi, while Shahid Kapoor’s character is said to be loosely based on Ustra. Nana Patekar plays Dawood, and Vikrant Massey appears as Sapna Didi’s husband, Mehmood Kaliya. The story follows Sapna Didi’s plan to take revenge on Dawood after her husband is killed in a police encounter. She teams up with Ustra to plot his assassination, but the plan fails, leading to violent consequences.
The film has had a long and troubled journey. It was first planned in 2017 with Irrfan Khan and Deepika Padukone and was then titled Rani. Honey Trehan was set to direct it. However, delays due to Deepika’s work on Padmaavat, creative differences between Trehan and Bhardwaj, and later Irrfan Khan’s illness stalled the project. After Irrfan’s death in 2020, along with production issues and the Covid-19 lockdown, the film was put on hold. It was revived a few years later when Sajid Nadiadwala came on board as producer. Shahid Kapoor and Triptii Dimri replaced the original cast, and the title was changed to O Romeo to avoid legal issues.
Despite these changes, the new lawsuit suggests the film’s problems are not over yet. O Romeo is currently scheduled to release in cinemas on February 13.
