Anubhav Sinha hits big time with $5 mn film

Anubhav Sinha's rise as director from the small time "Tum Bin" to big-scale action flicks like "Dus" and now "Cash" is phenomenal. But his biggest is yet to come - he's producing and directing a film that will be shot in Rome from July 15.

"My entire film will be situated in Rome. This film will be my last action flick. It's a $5 million film with huge action launching three new boys who will be signed on for my company. These three boys will have six films each from our production house in the next two years," Sinha told IANS.

The yet-untitled film will also have a female star from Bollywood and a big Italian actress. The entire technical crew will be from Italy. Sinha plans to wrap up the film by Sep 15 so he can have a Christmas release.

"Aditya Bhattacharya, who's directing two films for my production house, lives in Italy. He helped me put together this project. It will be my biggest. It cannot get any bigger."

Sinha says that he has been travelling a lot and has started thinking global.

"Why are there no 'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon' and 'No Man's Land' from India? That's because we aren't making them. I want to make films comparable with international films."

The director seems surprised by his own success.

"No one seems to notice that I made a big flop between 'Dus' and 'Cash' called 'Tathastu'. Lucky me! I worked hard on all my films. It's paying off now. You reap the dividends of your current film in the next.

"I don't know whether I've a formula. But people liked the styling of 'Dus'. After 'Dus', they labelled me the designer-action maker. I wonder where that came from!

"I was born in Allahabad and brought up in Varanasi. I came to Mumbai at the age of 26. So my formative years were spent in small towns. I don't know where all this slickness came from!"

But he is honest enough to confess he hasn't made any film to be extremely proud of.

" 'Dus' was written off by my unit in Canada. I was shooting it in the format of a TV serial. And no actor in the team had any faith in what I was doing. But after the first promo Abhishek Bachchan called up Sanjay Dutt to tell him how much he liked it. In 20 minutes it was the talk of the town."

The expectations from "Cash", which stars Ajay Devgan, Zayed Khan, Riteish Deshmukh and Esha Deol, scare the director.

"Everyone expects a track like 'Dus bahane'. I think we've better music in 'Cash' than 'Dus'."

The special effects in "Cash" are being compared with "Krrish" and "Dhoom".

"Please don't scare me. Those are very big films from brilliant production houses. If I've got in half as much of the visual effects, I'd be happy. My F-X in "Cash" are done locally in Mumbai."