Nikhil Bhat Delighted with "Apurva" Success on Disney+ Hotstar

Directed by Nikhil Nagesh Bhat, the film Apurva continues to garner a lot of good reviews. Word of mouth for the film has helped the film get more audience to watch the film. Apurva which is streaming on Disney+ Hotstar has got a lot of appreciation from the audience and critics. Sharing his success with us, Nikhil Bhat the director of Apurva says,”I personally don’t celebrate success. At the same time I feel when a film or a series does well, you have to raise your bar.” Apurva has a digital release on 15th November, ” I had written this story in 2009-2010 and had conceived this for the big screen. But now the penetration of OTT is huge. When the World Cup matches were going on and Apurva’s trailer was coming in 15 seconds my film was reaching 6 crore people. This kind of number is unbelievable and unthinkable.”

Tara who has debuted with Student Of The Year 2 in the industry has also worked in films like Tadap, Marjaavaan and Heropanti 2. Speaking about her casting in the titular role of the film Nikhil says,”People who have seen the film know the kind of vulnerability Tara has in her eyes and facial expressions. I don’t think anyone else could that. Firstly when she was kidnapped by the 4 goons she was pleading and crying for help. At the same time she was the one who fought back. If I had taken any other heroine in Tara’s place it would have been a forceful casting. Tara used to get hurt a lot almost everyday. All the major dragging scenes Tara had to do with a lot of pain. She had blisters in her body, she had a sprain. But not a single day did she complain or refuse to shoot.”

The film has some great intense scenes between Tara and the antagonists - Abhishek Banerjee, Rajpal Yadav and Sumit Gulati. The scenes came out quite good. The captain of the ship Nikhil shares,”With Tara I have not done any rehearse, because I wanted these scenes to come out naturally. There was not much discussion as I wanted to witness Tara’s organic reactions during the take. Though we had enough discussions on everything, we did not rehearse the scenes. With actor Sumit Gulati we did the practice of his evil smile, which was needed.”
The film has given us a beautiful melodious song Diwali which was sang by Vishal Mishra. Sharing more on the song which has been trending for quite sometime now Nikhil says,”Full credit to Vishal Mishra. I just gave him the situation and he assured me that he will give me something special. Initially it was not planned that film will come up during Diwali and I am happy that everything fell in place.”

Apurva also conveys a great message which is - do not lose hope. He adds,”This is not a revenge story. Certain things I have left it for imagination. And in today’s time it is important to show hope.

Nikhil’s next venture is much awaited Kill produced by Karan Johar and Guneet Monga, which stars Raghav Jual, Lakshya and Tanya Maniktala. Kill has got great response at the TIFF and early next year the film will see the light in India. Nikhil shares his view on Lakshya who is debuting with this film. He says,”Lakshya is a Dharma talent as well. When it came to casting, my producer Karan Johar mentioned this guy called Lakshya, and there were two or three other people we had scheduled for a screen test as well for the role of the main lead. When I met Lakshya, and we spoke about the story and the character, it felt as if he was this guy who looks tough but is also vulnerable at the same time and that’s exactly what I wanted the character to be like. After the meeting, I called Guneet and told her I do not need to meet anyone else.”
Lastly Nikhil admits his vision in filmmaking is storytelling. He has stayed in places like Patna, Pune and his filmmaking has been always the inspiration of storytelling which he feels he got it from our ancestors.