Forty-three years after Yash Chopra famously produced and directed Kaala Patthar, his cult film based on the Chasnala coal mining disaster, Bollywood has picked up the gauntlet of making a similar film with heroism as its theme. Yashji’s 1979 screenplay was written by Salim-Javed. And Kaala Patthar had Amitabh Bachchan, Shashi Kapoor, Shatrughan Singh, Neetu Singh, Rakhee and Parveen Babi in lead roles. PeepingMoon.com can exclusively tell you that Bollywood’s next coal mining rescue film will have Akshay Kumar in the lead. And it is being tentatively called Capsule Gill.
The film gets its title from former chief mining engineer Jaswant Singh Gill. In the 1989 Raniganj coal mining disaster, on which Capsule Gill is being made, this man heroically spearheaded the historic rescue operation that saved the lives of 64 workers trapped in a flooded coal mine. Filmmaker Tinu Suresh Desai, who directed Akshay’s 2016 crime thriller Rustom, will helm this film, while Vashu Bhagnani of Pooja Entertainment and Ajay Kapoor of Kyta Productions will jointly produce it. The film will go on the floor in the third quarter of this year in Amritsar.
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Tinu has been working on the life story of JS Gill for the last five years and is finally set to bring it alive in its full glory to a global audience. The film will mainly focus on the 1989 coal mine disaster and how Gill, risking his own life and going against the protests of those in authority, went down a borehole in a capsule and organized the evacuation of all the trapped miners. Desai has purchased Gill’s life rights and is in constant contact with his son, Dr. Sarvpreet Singh Gill, for additional story inputs. The director was earlier to make this film with Ajay Devgn. However, it didn’t take off due to reported creative differences between the two.
Capsule Gill is the latest addition to Akshay’s illustrious film calendar for 2022–23. The superstar already has Prithviraj, Mission Cinderella, Raksha Bandhan, Ram Setu, and Oh My God 2 scheduled for release this year, while for 2023 he has lined up Raj Mehta’s Selfiee, the Soorarai Pottru remake, Gorkha, and Ali Abbas Zafar’s big-scale action-comedy, Bade Miyan Chote Miyan. Capsule Gill is another film of the real-life story genre that Akshay is comfortable doing. It follows films like Airlift, Rustom, PadMan, Gold, Kesari, Mission Mangal and Bell Bottom. Among his forthcoming releases, YRF’s Prithviraj and Puran Singh Chauhan’s Gorkha are in similar space. Prithviraj is a historical drama based on the life of the legendary Rajput warrior Prithviraj Chauhan and Gorkha is a biopic on the veteran officer of the Indian Army’s Gorkha Regiment Major General Ian Cardozo.
