If you can place Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena and say what Fardeen Khan and Koena Mitra were thinking (if they were thinking at all), we would happily recommend you for the Limca Book of Records. Suparn Verma’s debut film had all the ingredients of a sleek con thriller – stylized frames, sleek editing, and a satisfactorily complicated con story. However, it went horribly wrong with the lead cast. Even a supremely talented Kay Kay Menon couldn’t salvage the combined devastation wrecked by Madam Mitra and Khan as the lead pair. The only reason the film was in news at all, was thanks to a ‘steamy’ song shot in a shower chamber. That was four years back. Verma, however, seems to have pushed his debut debacle back in his mind and is all gung-ho about his forthcoming multi-starrer Acid Factory. If you are expecting a raw action film, where heroes romp around the screen making pulp out of villains, Verma warns you from Acid Factory. “It has as much action as it has mindgames. It’s about strangers suffering from memory loss trapped together,” says Verma.

The failure of Ek Khiladi… had a lot to do with its complicated, stylized narrative that failed to strike a chord with the masses. But Verma has not consciously tried to depart from what he thinks is his idea of film-making. “You can’t take a cigarette break, come back and still not miss anything when you are watching my film,” says Verma.

Teaming up with Sanjay Gupta virtually gave Verma the license to go crazy. “He encourages you to let you imagination run wild. So even as Acid Factory’s concept is crazy, Sanjay had no second thoughts about going ahead with it,” he adds.

... contd.