By Siddharth Jha
New Delhi, April 16 (IANS): After having worked with Academy Award-winning director Danis Tanovic in the film “Tigers”, Bollywood actor Emraan Hashmi, who is geared up for his latest Hindi sci-fi release "Mr. X", says that in a given budget, Bollywood does more than what Hollywood productions can achieve.
"Mr. X" touches upon the concept of an invisible man, but Emraan, who along with his co-star Amyra Dastur, was recently on the sets of MTV's "Kaisi Yeh Yaariyan" to promote his film, doesn't want to "end up comparing it with 'Hollow Man'".
"It starts and ends with the invisibility and that's the only common factor between the two films. But as far as budgets go, they (Hollywood) obviously have mega budgets for their films, they have a world audience... We are limited to a Hindi-speaking audience."
"But I think in what we have, and the budget that we're given, we do more than what they can accomplish in that budget," Emraan told IANS in an interview over phone from Mumbai.
Produced by Vishesh Films and directed by Vikram Bhatt, “Mr. X” features Emraan as an invisible man, seeking revenge for all the wrong done to him.
Agreeing that shooting for films with visual effects is very time consuming, Emraan said it was fun since he has a special interest in high-on-VFX films.
"It just is very cumbersome shooting for a film which is in 3D and has visual effects and stuff. It's very time consuming and I was prepared for that. It's still fun because I'm interested in visual effects and I love 'Mr. India', so that was one incentive to do this film," he said.
Emraan, who feels that the concept of invisibility hasn't been incorporated in Indian cinema as much, feels the film will be as engaging for the adults as it will be for the youth.
"Even for adults, the film takes you back to the days when you saw films like 'Mr. India'. It's a fun film! There are a few dark scenes in it but there are lighter moments as well," said the actor, who has impressed audiences with films like "Jannat", "Gangster" and "Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai".
Apart from "Mr. X", which also stars Arunoday Singh in a key role and will release on Friday, Emraan is looking forward to the release of "Hamari Adhuri Kahani", in which he appears alongside Vidya Balan. He will also be starting with "Azhar", which is expected to hit the screens in the first quarter of 2016, in June.
Although he doesn't watch much TV, the 36-year-old actor has heard about “Kaisi Yeh Yaariyan” and thinks it has a large viewership among youth.
"I don't get to watch too much TV but I've heard about the show, it's quite popular with the young audience. It's great that we've taken our film here to promote and I think it's a fantastic integration. It goes out to the target audience that we want to take our film to," he said.