Vikram Vedha, an action-thriller directed by Pushkar-Gayathri, will release in Indian theatres on September 30. Starring Hrithik Roshan, Saif Ali Khan, Radhika Apte and Rohit Saraf, the film centres around a tough but honest police officer, Vikram (played by Khan), who seeks to arrest Vedha (played by Roshan), a gangster. The film revolves around the good versus evil binary, as Vikram’s perception of the good and bad changes when Vedha narrates his life.

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Vikram Vedha is a remake of the film by the same name, from the same directors, which released in 2017. The original Tamil film starred R Madhavan, Vijay Sethupathi and Shraddha Srinath in lead roles.

The Hindi film is based in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh but the first schedule of the film was shot in Abu Dhabi. A corner of Abu Dhabi was turned into Lucknow, but that came at a great expense. The second schedule, however, was shot in Lucknow in early December last year. 

Initially, there were some reports that said that it was Roshan who asked the crew to rebuild the sets of Lucknow in Abu Dhabi, as he refused to shoot in Lucknow itself. In response to this, Reliance Entertainment, one of the production houses for Vikram Vedha, clarified these rumours and said, ‘We have been noticing a lot of misleading and totally unsubstantiated reporting on Vikram Vedha shooting locations. We clearly want to state that Vikram Vedha has been shot extensively in India, including Lucknow.’

”A portion of the film was shot in the United Arab Emirates in October-November of 2021 since it was the only location providing the infrastructure for a bio-bubble that accommodated crew of such scale, also allowing building of sets in a studio during the preceding months of the shoot. We chose to do that out of health and protocol concerns,” they conveyed over their twitter handle. 

Vikram Vedha was made at a budget of Rs 175 crore, but revenue from advance booking has not been impressive. Advance bookings opened fairly recently, and as of Wednesday morning, it sold 45,000 tickets overall, generating a revenue of Rs 1 crore. The prediction for the advance booking is around 75,000 tickets. 

There has not been any confirmation on OTT release yet. Sources say directors will choose an OTT release date based on the response of the audience and will likely declare it 30 days after the film’s theatrical release.