Omung Kumar is baffled that Sanjay Dutt’s Bollywood return film, the revenge drama Bhoomi, proved to be box office disaster. This is the director’s third film after the biopics Mary Kom and Sarabjit. “In life, there are some hits and some misses; we win some and we lose some. This was one of the misses and losses for me,” Omung said with a tinge of regret.

Bhoomi was Dutt’s first film after he finished his jail term in the 1993 serial blasts case. The film which also stars Aditi Rao Hydari is an emotional drama based on a father-daughter relationship. Bhoomi, which released on September 22, collected Rs.8.46 crore overall. Omung said, “We were expecting a positive response as we thought we had made a good film, but unfortunately it didn’t manage to work with the audience.”

However, Omung is not bogged down with this failure and has already begun working on his next film. “I am working on my next script,” he admitted, adding, “It will go on floors next year and by the end of 2018 I will release the film.”

This is not The Good Maharaja that the grapevine said he was working on. “No, it’s a new story, I can’t speak about it right now,” Omung said. The director has already signed Sanjay Dutt for The Good Maharaja and had also released a poster of the actor in a Maharaja outfit.

Dutt plays Maharaja Jam Sahib Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji, the ruler of Nawanagar, a princely state in British India, who during World War II set up refugee camps in Jamnagar for Polish refugees from Russia and Siberia who were denied asylum by all other countries.
The Good Maharaja is reportedly an Indo-Polish production. “Sanjay looks regal and it was his idea to do this role and I wanted to direct it because it’s a superb story,” Omung has been quoted as saying. “We were asked by the Polish government to announce the film. But The Good Maharaja will go on floors only after two years, there is a lot of work on the script,” he said.