Reema Kagti On Superboys Of Malegaon: "We Didn't Try To Mimic Anybody"

Superboys of Malegaon has been produced by Ritesh Sidhwani, Farhan Akhtar, Zoya Akhtar, and Reema Kagti. 

While the film will have its theatrical release on February 28, 2025, it has been receiving a lot of appreciation at various film festivals.

Superboys of Malegaon premiered at the 49th Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), on September 14, 2024. 

The film will make its Australian premiere to officially open The National Indian Film Festival of Australia (NIFFA) on February 13, 2025, in Sydney.

Director Reema Kagti said that this film is her attempt to capture the essence of Nasir Shaikh, a self-taught filmmaker known for making local spoofs of films like Sholay and Superman in a small town in Maharashtra.

The story of Shaikh and his ragtag group of local film enthusiasts has been captured beautifully in Faiza Ahmad Khan's popular 2008 documentary Supermen of Malegaon. 

Kagti, known for critically acclaimed films such as Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd (2007), Talaash (2012), and the OTT series Dahaad (2023), said she and others involved with the movie, are fans of the documentary and they have given it a shout out in their film. But her aim was not to mimic anything but rather capture the emotions behind the true story.

She said, "With all the actors, we didn't try to mimic anybody. It was about trying to get a sense of the person. But having said that we tried to work on a lot of things like hair, makeup, wardrobe, and production design and all of that was done to hit the era we were in."

She added, "The documentary is about the making of Supermen of Malegaon, and our film, over ten years, covers the making of the director Nasir. So, it goes a little more in-depth, into the start of his journey. We knew the documentary was out there and it's very good, and how do we up the game a little more? Luckily, we had all the tools of fiction to do that," Kagti told reporters at the trailer launch of Superboys of Malegaon.

The film features Adarsh Gourav as Shaikh and also stars Shashank Arora, Vineet Kumar Singh, and Anuj Singh Duhan.

Filmmaker Zoya Akhtar, who serves as a producer on the movie, said it is a universal story that speaks of the human experience.

She said, "It's about people who felt (they were) outside of a system and wanted to do something, so they created their system. And today, mainstream cinema is making a film on them."

An Excel Entertainment and Tiger Baby production, Superboys of Malegaon is written by lyricist-writer Varun Grover.

Grover credited Shaikh for helping him add depth to the story. He also visited Malegaon and met the actors and people connected to the local film industry there.

"I benefited a lot from Nasir's habit of documenting his life. He is one of the best archivists. He has all the moments, right from his childhood. For instance, he has a clipping of the news article about his play at the age of 15 or 16, and he has multiple copies of it," the writer said.

In the trailer, Vineet Kumar Singh's character says, 'Writer baap hota hai', and when asked if the dialogue came from his angst as a writer, Grover said the phrase holds true only for legends like Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar.

Adarsh Gourav said he is nervous about the theatrical release.

He said, "I'm very nervous not because I have some expectation of it to become some massive box office success, but when so many people collectively watch a film together sitting in a theatre, it is a very different feeling than when you are watching a film on an OTT platform, at home."

Gourav added, "That is what makes me nervous. Personally, it's been eight years since I've had a film released in a theatre. The last film that had a theatrical release in which I was playing the central character was Rukh, which was in 2017."

Nikhil Madhok, Head of Originals, Prime Video India, said they never discussed having a direct-to-OTT release.

He said, "We always knew this is a movie that should go to theatres. Certain movies are best watched as a community experience, and this is one of them. A movie about cinema has to be watched in a cinema hall."