Remember the blue-eyed cutie, Jugal Hansraj in Shekhar Kapoor's Masoom? Well, the actor is ready with his directorial debut, Roadside Romeo.
While his acting career didn't really picked up -- remember Mohabbatein? -- he was lucky in some ways. With Mohabbatein he made a powerful friend, top filmmaker Aditya Chopra, who later offered Jugal a chance to direct an animation film. And that's how Roadside Romeo was born.
Now, with the film's release slated for October 24, Jugal tells Nithya Ramani how he made the film, and how he got Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor and Javed Jaffery to lend their voices to the film. Excerpts:
What made you take up direction?
It wasn't planned at all. Adi [Aditya Chopra] is an old friend. He has always fancied animation films, so he wanted to produce the same for the Indian audience. I'm crazy about animation films too. I have watched all kinds of animation movies from Pixar and Dreamworks. I especially love Finding Nemo, Madagascar, Ice Age and my all-time favourite, Jungle Book. I used to read books on the making of animation films out of curiousity.
So Adi told me to give it a shot. I started working on it and gave him various ideas. After six months, when the script was ready, I passed it on to Adi. Since I had written it, Adi suggested that I direct it because I knew the story inside out. I had never thought about direction until Adi put it into my head.
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Remember the blue-eyed cutie, Jugal Hansraj in Shekhar Kapoor's Masoom? Well, the actor is ready with his directorial debut, Roadside Romeo.