Anil Kapoor, Harsh Varrdhan Kapoor to star in Netflix revenge thriller Thar

Father and son Anil and Harsh Varrdhan Kapoor will star together in the upcoming Netflix revenge thriller Thar.

Directed by first-time filmmaker Raj Singh Chaudhary, the film also stars Fatima Sana Shaikh and Satish Kaushik and will be premiered this summer.

Thar is inspired by the western noir genre and is set in the 1980s. Harsh Varrdhan plays Siddharth, a youth who relocates to Pushkar for a job but soon embarks on a journey of vengeance.

Raj Singh Chaudhary, who has also written the film, has penned the dialogues along with filmmaker Anurag Kashyap.

The project, which is being backed by Anil Kapoor Film Company (AFKC), marks the maiden collaboration between the production house and Netflix.

The father-son duo was last seen in Vikramaditya Motwane’s AK Vs AK (2020), a meta thriller in which they played versions of themselves. They were also due to star together in Olympic gold medalist Abhinav Bindra’s biopic, but there has been no update with that project for a while now.

Producer and actor Anil Kapoor said in a statement, “I am extremely proud of what we have achieved with Thar and am super excited about the film for several reasons. The genre itself — a noir thriller set in Rajasthan that pays tribute to the genre of the classic western — is a first for Indian cinema and audiences. Thar is a playground where the dynamism of new blood meets the experience of industry stalwarts, both on and off-screen.”

He continued, “On screen, we see the fresh pairing of Harsh Varrdhan Kapoor and Fatima Sana Shaikh and off-screen we see director Raj Singh Chaudhary creating magic with a team of ambitious, risk-taking debutantes - director of photography Shreya Dev Dube and music composer Ajay Jayanthi. As an actor and a producer, I have always strived to push the envelope and disrupt the status quo with innovative content.”

Shreya Dev Dube has shot the award-winning shorts Cat Sticks (2020) and Bittu (2021) and has worked on Mira Nair's A Suitable Boy (2020). Ajay Jayanthi, who hails from a family of Carnatic musicians, is an accomplished violinist and has played music for the project Shaadisthan (2021) and Unpaused: Naya Safar (2022).

“Thar is a manifestation of this obsession and I'm thrilled to have a partner as supportive and collaborative as Netflix to take this story as far and wide as it can go. We, at the AKFC network truly believe that audiences in India and across the globe will love and embrace the film for all its beauty, grit and thrill,” he concluded.

Pratiksha Rao, director of films and licensing at Netflix India, said, “At Netflix, we are huge fans of films, just like our members. Bringing to them the most entertaining and diverse films is not possible without taking creative swings with passionate filmmakers, and Thar is an example of such storytelling. We were drawn towards Raj's passionate vision for the unique story, and were excited to collaborate with AKFC.”