04 September,2026 12:29 PM IST | Mumbai | Mohar Basu
Emraan Hashmi. Pics/Youtube, Instagram, Yogen Shah
With Emraan Hashmi-starrer Gunmaaster G9 locking its release date for late November, director Aditya Dutt is set to reunite with the actor nearly two decades after their collaboration on Aashiq Banaya Aapne. While the two have been trying to collaborate again for several years, Dutt reveals that two separate projects they had planned together failed to materialise, despite both getting close to going on floors. "We've been trying to put movies on the floor from a decade now. Every time our movie was supposed to go on floors, there was an issue," Dutt says.
The director recalls that their first attempt at reuniting came in 2009, with a script to be produced by a leading studio. "We were supposed to do a film together back in 2009 once, which was written by Mr Anees Bazmee for us. The studio pulled the plug a couple of months before the shoot. We were actually into prep for that film," he recalls.
The duo tried again around 2014-16, this time with a film being produced by Sanjay Leela Bhansali's production house. But that project too eventually fell through. "We finished the scripting, Mr Bhansali was producing the film and I was supposed to do it and take it on floors. There was a mishap and again that script didn't happen. Sadly, every time we were so close to shooting, we were literally supposed to go on floors and something would just not work out."
Gunmaaster G9 finally gave the collaborators the opportunity they had been waiting for. "I would get busy with another film and he would get busy with something. Things were just not falling into place. And then, like they say, everything has a time, and this just happened."
Emraan Hashmi in the âGunmaaster G9' teaser
Despite the success and nostalgia associated with Aashiq Banaya Aapne, Dutt says making a sequel was never the intention. He believes both he and Hashmi have evolved as storytellers and performers since their earlier collaboration. "Back then we were kids. It was a different energy. It would have been very simple to put another Aashiq Banaya Aapne and flow, but I think as cinema, we just grew into liking new things. All the stories that we want to tell and him as an actor, he's grown so much. I'm hoping that I'm growing as a director too."
With Gunmaaster G9, Dutt was particularly keen to take Hashmi into an action space he felt the actor had not explored in this manner before. "I just wanted to do something new with him, something which he's also not done. I don't think Emraan's done a nice, great action film ever. I wanted to do something which stands out and breaks whatever he's done and I have done also in the past. I don't want to do obvious, expected things."
The title Gunmaaster G9 may immediately remind audiences of Mithun Chakraborty's iconic Gunmaster G9 character, but Dutt says the connection is coincidental rather than intentional. "I know people are thinking, is he an agent or is it from the Mithunda thing? Actually, it's not. It's got nothing to do with Mithunda's character, but a hat tip perhaps. The film is about the underworld and gangsters. My main character is great with guns and he's a master of it, and G9 is the Glock 9 that he loves carrying with him. That's why Gunmaaster G9."
For Dutt, the film is ultimately an attempt to bring back the emotional ingredients of mainstream Hindi cinema while presenting them through a contemporary lens. "The basic emotion is always the same. Even when I'm trying to narrate something in today's day and age, I wanted to keep that basic core emotion of an Indian audience alive the music, the romance, the action and at the same time have a language of a 2026 narrator."
