'Ardh Satya 2' ready to roll

Govind Nihalani is giving the final touches to the script of the sequel of his '80s police drama Ardh Satya. The highly-acclaimed film starred Om Puri, Amrish Puri, Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah and Sadashiv Amrapurkar.

A still from Ardh Satya

Considering that a plethora of cop dramas doing well at the box office in the recent past, the makers had expressed a desire to revisit Ardh Satya that took a look at a cop struggling with the wrongs around him. Nihalani had made an announcement last year that he was keen to revisit the story three decades later.

Says Nihalani, "By August, I should be ready with the script. My greatest dilemma was whether to continue the story forward with the same actors or just take the idea and remake it with a new cast. I think we have managed to strike a balance."

Ardh Satya was produced by Manmohan Shetty and it was his idea to make a sequel. "He expressed a desire and after thinking for quite a while, we decided to finally take the story forward," says Nihalani.

Govind Nihalani

Though there has been buzz that he has been sounding out some of the cast members of the first outing, Nihalani maintains, "Once the script is ready I will start the casting. But I would like to have Om Puri take the story forward. Naseer's character died in the film so he will have to take on a new persona."

Incidentally, Nihalani's last B-Town outing was the Amitabh Bachchan-Kareena Kapoor-Fardeen Khan starrer Dev in 2004. He admits, "It's been a while since I made a film but I was busy with an animation film which will release around December. It was a great learning experience exploring the animation genre."u00a0