Following in the footsteps of his half-brother Shahid, Ishaan Khatter will be starring in a full-fledged war film. Pippa will be the biggest shoot in Bollywood since the pandemic, with around 600 people converging on the sets.
The film is based on The Burning Chaffees, a book by war-veteran Brigadier Balram Singh Mehta of the 45th Cavalry Tank Squadron, who fought on the Eastern Front during the 1971 Indo-Pak war. The film’s title is a reference to the Russian amphibious war tank PT-76, fondly known as Pippa.
Ishaan will play the role of the Brigadier and has been training for the role under commandos. “Pippa is a war film. We will be having a large cast and crew of around 600 people for the war scenes which are being filmed close to the Bangladesh border,” says a source connected to Pippa.
Sharing another interesting titbit, the source says, “We will also be using more than 300 ‘guns’ apart from other weapons in the film. But we are not allowed to use real guns while filming in India now. When we shoot for films abroad, we can use real guns and fake bullets.”
Mrunal Thakur plays Ishaan’s sister in the film directed by Raja Krishna Menon. The action has been designed by Vikram Dahiya. Meanwhile, Shahid is playing Brigadier Balsara, a paratrooper, in the upcoming film Bull, after having donned the defence uniform earlier in films like Mausam and Rangoon. Shahid will be learning techniques of paratrooping for Bull, having picked up other techniques for Mausam and Rangoon,” says the source close to the Kabir Singh actor.
