Better Saif than Sobhraj

The entire Charles Sobhraj project, that has been in the pipeline of director Prawaal Raman for the last three years, has gone in for a scriptural revamp. Prawaal, whose last film 404 was a chilling horror film, has done away with the lengthy bio-pic and written the script to suit Saif Ali Khan who plays the character. Earlier, the plan was to cast Sanjay Dutt and make it an authentic bio-pic. But, then litigations loomed large over the project. Also, a source close to the project informs us, Saif was not keen on playing Sobhraj per se. But, after doing a series of rom-coms, Saif now seems keen on changing his career profile with more realistic films. “Saif loved one portion of the film, namely Sobhraj’s escape from Tihar jail. It is one of grandest jailbreak sagas in the history of convicted term-servers. Only that aspect of the film has now been taken forward and the script is now being completely rewritten to suit Saif’s personality.” We hear the film now accommodates some terrific action sequences. The idea, we hear, is to now shoot the film entirely on location at the Tihar jail in Delhi, capturing the daredevilish daylight in March 1986 in real-time detail. Prawaal confirms that he has re-written the entire Sobhraj saga to give it a tighter ‘thriller’ feel. Says the director, “We all feel the story works much better as a thriller. We’ve added commercial elements to the original storyline. Our film is now called Jailbreak. I don’t think this can be considered as Charles Sobhraj’s story anymore by any stretch of the imagination.”