Superman's got nothing on me: John Abraham [video]

It’s going to be a battle of a different kind at the box-office this weekend, what with Batman and Superman pitched against Bollywood’s 'super' hero ‘Rocky Handsome’.

While the Hollywood competition may come complete with cape and masks, the Bollywood hunk is ready to thrill with muscles, six-pack abs and some, killer combat moves.

A clash that may make little business sense for any moviemaker but one that doesn’t seem to rattle John Abraham, who was in Dubai to promote his action thriller.

“Those are superheroes. If you want to see a real hero, then you see ‘Rocky Handsome’,” he told Emirates 24|7.

“You have a Wonderwoman there (referring to ‘Superman vs Batman: Dawn of Justice’), and you have a wonder kid here.

“I honestly believe this (‘Rocky Handsome’) is in a fantastic real space. Trust me, we were planning to come out on this date even when another Hindi movie had picked this date (March 25 for India). But the other Hindi film moved.

“We were very sure this is the date for us. And, we are very adamant about it.

“We are not overconfident. We just believe we have our own space, with total respect to other films.”

Director Nishikant Kamat adds “this kind of action is new to the Hindi movie space”.

Apart from the action, ‘Rocky Handsome’ also sees John and Nishikant take on double roles. While John steps in as the hero and producer, Nishikant plays the villain and director.

The roles though varied didn’t tax John as much as it did Nishikant. “As a producer my job is done once I sign on a person who is beyond credible to the project, which Nishikant is, and the other pre-requisite is content. My job as a producer is prior to the shoot, where we discuss casting, story and everything that needs to be dealt with in the pre-production stage. Then, I come in for post-production. But, on set, I was there only as an actor.”

Nishikant, however, struggled. “I don’t think I would do this ever again,” he quipped.

“Someone else was supposed to play the villain, but he developed cold feet, and it was too late for me to cast another actor. It was one of my AD’s who suggested I step in. Very honestly, somebody had to bite the bullet.

“I’ve acted before, on stage, but I have never done both – acting and directing. There were scenes where I was worried if the trolley would come on the mark, and then it hit me that I’m in the frame as an actor.”

The movie, which was initially pitched to be titled Johnny Handsome, changed to Rocky. “We’ve always had a debate about who got the title. Jokes apart, initially when we were thinking about the title, I thought ‘handsome’ would fit in with John’s onscreen personality. But there’s a movie in the ’80s titled ‘Johnny Handsome’. Johnny was too close to John, so that wasn’t ideal.

“Over a few days, we picked Rocky. It also holds relevance to the story, as it talks about his dual life – one as Rocky, and the other as Handsome.” And, the fact that John is a huge fan of Sylvester Stallone just tied it all together.

The close-combat action, which Nishikant insisted, has not been explored in Bollywood. “I don’t think John has done this scale of martial arts, nor have I. We were skeptical initially but we wanted to do it right. So, we roped in a team from Thailand.”

John had to train in Thailand for 30 days. “You can do the best action in the world but if your emotion is not right, your film will fail. And, because we had the emotion in place, we wanted to take action to the next level. And, we decided to take on hand-to-hand combat,” added John.

“I trained 14 hours a day and by the end of it, my body was sore. It was black and blue. But, when you watch the movie you would realise that the action is effortless, and that’s the beauty of training.”

The action thriller starring Nishikant, John and Shruti Hassan will hit UAE theatres on March 24.

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