Pankaj Tripathi's chemistry with Rasika Dugal was widely appreciated in Amazon Prime Video's most popular series, Mirzapur. The action crime thriller show set in the Purvanchal region of Uttar Pradesh saw Tripathi as Kaleen Bhaiya, a mafia don and proverbial ruler of Mirzapur while Dugal played the role of his wife with a dark secret. Now, Peepingmoon.com has learned that the two power-packed performers are set to collaborate once again — this time for a feature film produced by Reliance Entertainment.
Sources close to the development have informed us that Pankaj Tripathi and Rasika Dugal are now reuniting for a man-animal conflict story, titled Sherdil. The Srijit Mukherji directorial is said to be about a village in Uttarakhand which is undergoing rapid deaths due to natural calamities and will see Tripathi playing the role of the Panchayat head who voluntarily goes into the forest to save his poor family. How his character Gangaram decides to fix the problem for the village himself forms the crux of the story, written by Srijit Mukherji along with Sudeep Nigam. Rasika Dugal will be seen playing Tripathi's wife in the film that also stars Neeraj Kabi in a pivotal role.
Interestingly, Sherdil was originally announced way back in 2019 and was earlier supposed to go on floors in November 2020. However, the COVID-19 induced lockdown, and then Pankaj Tripathi's busy date diaries postponed the film indefinitely. The makers are now planning to shoot the film sometime around November or December this year in Uttarakhand. Believed to be a passion project for Srijit Mukherji, this film is inspired by a real-life incident that happened in 2017 in the Philibhit Tiger Reserve where local families would send their older family members into the forest as tiger preys to claim compensation from the government. A string of fatal tiger attacks on the elders had led the forest authorities to suspect this monstrous crime.
Meanwhile, Pankaj Tripathi has again won the hearts of millions with his stellar act in the recently released Mimi. The actor is receiving some of the best responses for his portrayal as Bhanu Pratap Pandey in the Kriti Sanon starrer surrogacy drama. The versatile actor will next be seen as PR Man Singh in the much-anticipated sports film, '83, and then in Yash Raj Films' Bunty Aur Babli 2, followed by Akshay Kumar's Bachchan Pandey. Stay tuned to us as we bring more updates on his new films lineup soon!