MUMBAI: Anil Kapoor, Arjun Rampal and Ronit Roy will soon be facing some of the toughest locational problems of their lives. Unable to shoot his film on global terrorism in Pakistan Nikhil Advani has decided to shoot in the Rann Of  Kutch. The salty marshland is considered among the most grueling portions of the earth bequeathed to civilization .

Anil Kapoor is now preparing for some rough times ahead.

Rishi Kapoor’s loss is Anil Kapoor’s gain. In Nikhil Advani’s  espionage drama featuring Arjun Rampal, Ronit Roy and a bunch of he-men on a  mission to bring Dawood Ibrahim back from Pakistan to India by road, Anil Kapoor is cast as the head of the mission.

Says a source close to the project, "Anil is very much in that Mission Impossible mode again, though this time far he’s more pivotal to the plot than in MI 4. Anil plays a RAW agent on the verge of retirement who’s given the mammoth task of bringing India’s most wanted criminal back to the country for a trial."

 

The role requires huge amounts of physical training for the actor which he’s about to embark on even as he gets ready to play the encounter cop Isaque Bhagwan in Sanjay Gupta’s Shootout At Wadala.

Interestingly Rishi Kapoor was first offered the role. But Nikhil apparently needed someone  leaner and more athletic, though from the same generation  of actors. Nikhil and Anil have worked together earlier in the director’s Salaam-e-Ishq where Anil was cast as a middleaged husband who is tempted to  have an affair.

Even more interestingly the dark sinister mood of Sanjay Gupta’s and Nikhil Advani’s films suggest that Anil Kapoor may be traversing a similar territory in both the films.

Both Anil and Ronit Roy are common to Gupta’s and Advani’s films.

However Sanjay Gupta dismisses any  clash between the two films. "I know Anil is common to my film and Nikhil Advani’s. But there’s no clash. I’ve Anil’s dates for Shootout At Wadala from March. Then in Mid-May both my leading men Anil and John Abraham leave for Istanbul to shoot for Race 2.So I’ll be shooting without them for a few months."

 

As for the two films being sinister, violent tales of global terrorism with Dawood playing a key character in both Gupta says, "It’s a totally different world.And let me tell you, I don’t know who’s playing Dawood in Nikhil’s film. But when you know who’s my Dawood you’ll be shocked."

 

Shocking times ahead for Anil. All his three films this year Shootout At Wadala, Race 2 and Nikhil Advani’s untitled RAW saga require tremendous physical exertion from the actor. Anil’s getting into shape. He will also be shooting in land that’s not cinema-friendly: Istanbul for Race 2 and Afghanistan for Nikhil Advani’s film.

Confirms Nikhil, "I’m doing the film.But before that I am doing another film. Because Anil is busy with Shootout At Wadala and Race 2.We shoot in the Rann Of Kutch close to winter."