Rumours were doing the rounds lately that Mohit Suri had roped in John Abraham and Aditya Roy Kapur for a sequel to his musical hit Ek Villain (2014), featuring Sidharth Malhotra, Riteish Deshmukh and Shraddha Kapoor in central characters. Now, the filmmaker, who is presently busy promoting his upcoming film Malang, has confirmed the development.
Ek Villain 2 will be bankrolled by content czarina Ekta Kapoor’s Balaji Motion Pictures in association with Bhushan Kumar’s T-Series Films. The project is set to go before cameras in June. John Abraham, who was last seen in Pagalpanti (2019), will be collaborating with Mohit Suri for the first time in his career.
The filmmaker explains that since Ek Villain 2 is not a direct sequel to Ek Villain, the project needed a fresh casting. “Ekta and I were looking to create a whole franchise on villains. Shraddha, Sidharth and Riteish have been a part of my biggest films and I love them, but this is a different story, with new characters that refer to the older ones,” he told a tabloid.
While the first part of the series revolved around a hero and a villain, with Shraddha Kapoor as the catalyst, Ek Villain 2 is more of a fight between bad versus worse. “It’s essentially villain versus villain. Both Adi and John are playing negative characters,” confirms Mohit Suri.
The filmmaker reveals that he ended up casting Aditya Roy Kapur in the sequel after watching glimpses of his intense performance in his upcoming directorial offering Malang. “We are going to push the bar further with Villain 2,” he said.
When asked about signing John Abraham, Suri said, “I was an assistant on John’s first film and we have been trying to work with each other for a while. This script proved to be a great platform for the two of us to come together and I am excited about it. We start rolling in June.”
