Players

About the film

Players is a 2012 Indian Hindi-language action thriller film directed by the duo Abbas–Mustan and jointly produced by Viacom18 Motion Pictures and Burmawala Partners. The film features an ensemble cast of Vinod Khanna, Abhishek Bachchan, Bobby Deol, Sonam Kapoor, Bipasha Basu, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Sikandar Kher and Omi Vaidya, while Aftab Shivdasani appears in a cameo. The theatrical trailer premiered on 3 November 2011, and the film was released on 6 January 2012. It is an official remake of The Italian Job, and is the second remake of the 1969 British film after the 2003 American remake of the same name. Players employs the same plot as the 2003 version, while making the characters and incidents completely different.

The story follows a team of players, consisting of a don, a con-man, a lady thief, a seductress, a magician, an explosives expert, an expert hacker and a prosthetic makeup artist, who plan to steal gold worth ₹100 billion (US$1.0 billion) from a moving train. During the robbery they are double crossed by members of their own team.

Plot

Charlie's friend, Raj, is killed by the Russian mafia. At Raj's funeral, his wife Shaila hands Charlie a CD containing information about the transfer of gold ingots by train from Russia to Romania. Charlie decides to rob the train with the help of his mentor and conman, Victor Braganza. They hire a team of criminals to join them in the robbery, the group includes Spider, a world-class hacker, Riya Thapar a seductress and automobile expert, Bilal Bashir, an explosives expert; Sunny, a prosthetic makeup artist; and Ronnie, a magician.

Before the heist, Victor's daughter Naina returns to India from Australia to receive Victor when he is released from prison. The group of players devises a plan to rob the Russian train in the sleaziest way possible. Spider hacks into a Russian satellite system, Riya seduces a high-ranking Russian officer so Charlie can impersonate him using a mask and wig provided by Sunny, and Ronnie creates an illusion to trick the soldiers guarding the gold while the rest of the team transfers the gold from the train. The robbery is executed successfully. Charlie calls Victor to inform him of the successful robbery, but Naina overhears the call and realizes Victor broke a promise to her to never return to his life of crime.

While the players celebrate their success, Ronnie reveals to the team that he has a daughter who is hospitalized because she got paralyzed during one of his magic performances and hopes to help her recover soon. Spider double-crosses the gang and explains that he got to know about the gold from Shaila before Charlie while seducing her, then tries to flee with all of the gold. Spider is stopped by Ronnie, who is then shot multiple times by Spider's assassins. The group is chased by the assassins as Ronnie and Riya are killed by Spider. Charlie, Bilal, and Sunny manage to escape after Spider blows up the location and flees with the gold. At the same time, Spider's assassins break into the house and murders Victor. Naina decides to cut off all contact with Charlie. Over the course of a year, Charlie contacts various gold dealers to learn which one has the stolen gold that Spider escaped with.

Production

Development on the project began in late 2009, when Viacom 18 approached Abbas–Mustan with the idea of remaking The Italian Job into a desi Indian version, and bought the remake rights from the original producers Paramount Pictures. At first, Abbas–Mustan were hesitant, but after watching the 2003 remake of The Italian Job, they decided it would be a good idea to Indianise it. They spent around a year working on the script and making a few tweaks including two new characters, played by Basu and Deol.

Bachchan was the first actor to be signed, along with Katrina Kaif and Neil Nitin Mukesh, to play the roles originally played by Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron and Edward Norton in the 2003 American remake. Mukesh was approached for the negative role, as the directors were impressed by his performance in Johnny Gaddar (2007). Rumours circulated of different names being linked and approached including Sonakshi Sinha, who opted out due to date problems, to Anushka Sharma supposedly being called in to replace her. Kareena Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra had also been approached to play the leading female roles opposite Kunal Kapoor and Akshaye Khanna. Khanna later claimed he was never approached and expressed disappointment in not being cast. Kapoor left the film out due to her family problems with the Bachchan's. Deepika Padukone was also backed out, as she just like Chopra felt "the female lead does not have a strong part to play". Chopra was eventually dropped in a controversial matter, citing differences with Bachchan and the directors. Later Abbas Mustan claimed that the film was never offered to Chopra.

At one point the film had no three male leads and no female lead, which caused the directors to panic, after Kaif also backed out due to date problems. As the directors wanted a younger girl she was eventually replaced by Sonam Kapoor. Kapoor walked out of the film, as the director she was working with on another film, Mausam, asked to concentrate solely on his film. However, she was signed again, as she managed to a lot dates, but due to heavy pressure from both projects, she passed out on the sets of Mausam.

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