This Independence Day weekend two bollywood biggies are going for a face off though not at the box office but on major OTT platforms. We are talking about ‘Shershaah’ coming on Amazon Prime Video on August 12 and ‘Bhuj: The Pride Of India’ on Disney+ Hotstar on August 13.
Talking about the premise, ‘Bhuj’ is set during the 1971 Indo-Pak war and follows the story of IAF Squadron Leader Vijay Karnik (Ajay Devgn) who reconstructed the IAF airbase with the help of local villagers. The film is a star studded affair with big names like Ajay Devgn, Sanjay Dutt, Sonakshi Sinha, Nora Fatehi, Sharad Kelkar and Ammy Virk among others on board.
On the other hand, ‘Shershaah’ is based on the life of Param Vir Chakra awardee Captian Vikram Batra who led one of the toughest operations in mountain warfare in Indian history. He was martyred during the Kargil war in 1999. Siddharth Malhotra and Kiara Advani play the lead roles in this Karan Johar film.
Both these films are filled with high doses of patriotism and unmatched valour of our armed forces, something that always makes way into the audience’s hearts. In fact if conditions were normal, ‘Shershaah’ and ‘Bhuj’ had high chances of gaining big commercially in theatres. But will they paas the highly critical OTT audience’s quality test?
Now that’s a question that the makers of these films might not have had in mind when they first conceptualised them. Both ‘Shershaah’ and ‘Bhuj’ are big budget films coming from some big production houses of the industry. But while the destiny of ‘Bhuj’ going for a digital release was confirmed and announced long back, the makers of ‘Shershaah’ did so only a few days back despite rumours of the same doing rounds from a long time.
From the surface of it, Bhuj takes lead when it comes to the star cast of the films. But other than that it would be too early to say which one will surpass the other. This will be the second time Ajay Devgn and Karan Johar are up against each other after the ‘Shivaya’ and ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’ clash in 2016.
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