Filmmaker Siddharth Anand teases future of spy universe following Pathaan’s success

Filmmaker says Aditya Chopra has big plans and that the audience should expect the unexpected

Filmmaker Siddharth Anand is still flying high following the soaring success of Pathaan – the biggest Indian hit film of the year. The project marked Shah Rukh Khan’s long-awaited comeback since his 2018 film Zero. And boy, did he return with a bang! “There was a lot of curiosity to see Shah Rukh Khan back after his hiatus,” Anand told Variety.

He continued, “Shah Rukh took a break from media, from appearances, he just became inaccessible to the world, there suddenly was a thirst that he created for him – today, audiences are used to stars being out there in social media and events and everywhere.”

Pathaan is part of Chopra’s spy universe. Other films in the universe include the Tiger franchise, starring Salman Khan, and War, featuring Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff. Going forward, Anand asks the audience to expect the unexpected in the universe. “There’s a plethora of possibilities out there that we can do in terms of overlaps, creation of new characters and spin-offs,” Anand said. “I’m sure Aditya Chopra has some plans. And in time, he’ll unveil them.”

The box office record that Pathaan broke for the highest first day gross of a Hindi-language film, was of Anand’s own project War. “These numbers are surreal. When we hit the first day numbers for War, we were ecstatic, elated, and we thought it’s so tough to do and won’t happen again,” he noted. “It’s once in a lifetime we get this kind of these kind of numbers going, but to have hit it again in my next film, and then hit it for four days and after that on the weekend, it’s a feeling I can’t even describe. It’s unreal, I just feel sometimes I am dreaming.”