Dreaded terrorist Dawood Ibrahim has fired the imagination of filmmakers and actors in Bollywood for decades. This obsession with the gangster has always resulted in Bollywood filmmakers glorifying him and his family members. The recent crop of Bollywood films, taking inspiration from the mafioso and featuring him and his D-company includes filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma’s upcoming film D Company, amongst others.
Varma had on January 23, taken to Twitter to share the teaser of the film. He wrote, “D Company is not just about Dawood Ibrahim but it’s about the various people who lived and died under its shadow. It is Produced by SPARK.”
D Company is not just about Dawood Ibrahim but it’s about the various people who lived and died under its shadow..It is Produced by SPARK @SparkSagar1 https://t.co/Nff1jm0TGs
— Ram Gopal Varma (@RGVzoomin) January 23, 2021
In another tweet, he called D Company the ‘mother of all gangster films’. The film will release in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada.
‘I owe my living to Dawood Ibrahim’: Filmmaker Ram Gopal Verma
Ram Gopal Varma while speaking about his upcoming work, D Company, said that he will be spreading like ‘Coronavirus 2.0 in 2021’ and ‘no vaccine’ can stop him.
When asked why he chooses to make films glorifying gangsters like Dawood Ibrahim and why not films on Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Teresa, the filmmaker confessed: “Because I owe my living to Dawood Ibrahim”. Ram Gopal Verma added that his upcoming film is extremely authentic as his “D Company sources are straight insiders”.
Further answering whether the movie will appeal to the real Dawood and what would he do if the gangster doesn’t like the reel, Dawood, in his film?, Ram Gopal Verma said confidently: “Trust me, he will love him”.
While extensively explaining his fascination with the syndicate, the Bollywood filmmaker Ram Gopal Verma, went on to compare his D Company with Mahabharat. He claimed that like the ancient Sanskrit epic, D company also concerns several characters and not just Dawood.
Talking about his dream project, RGV said in a statement, “This is my dream project and my research on the subject matter of D Company came from my extensive interactions over the last 20 years with gangsters to encounter cops to middlemen of the underworld and also many film people who were involved with the underworld. I have always been intrigued to tell the uniqueness of the Indian underworld and its strange and weird mix where everyone from criminals to politicians to cops to film stars were hopping into each other’s beds.”
Bollywood’s obsession with D-company
Bollywood has been long glorifying the criminal who has been a fugitive since 1986 to avoid criminal prosecution. Bollywood has never shied away from building a glamourous image of the underworld and an aura around the man, who is currently on the wanted list of Interpol for organised crime and counterfeiting.
Miffed with this trend continuing in Bollywood, the former IPS officer turned lawyer and now filmmaker YP Singh said: “They glorify gangsters by making them heroes, who pull off daring stunts and action scenes, but in real life they are merely rats who are holed up in other countries. The film industry must realise, they are encouraging youngsters to adopt crime,” added Singh.
