Not just Kangana Ranaut’s Emergency, Vidya Balan’s Indira Gandhi series also awaiting a go-ahead

Kangana Ranaut took to her X handle on Friday to announce that she’s heartbroken that her maiden solo directorial, Emergency, wouldn’t release on the day as it’s still awaiting clearance from the Central Board of Film Certification. The actor-filmmaker, who plays former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in the period political thriller based on the 1975 Emergency, said the Sikh community has objected to their depiction in certain sections of her movie.

Much before Kangana started work on Emergency, in 2018, Vidya Balan had acquired the rights to journalist Sagarika Ghose’s 2017 book Indira: India’s Most Powerful Prime Minister. Vidya said it was her long-cherished dream to play Indira Gandhi on screen. Her husband, Siddharth Roy Kapur, was supposed to be the producer under his banner, Roy Kapur Films.

In 2019, in an interview with Firstpost, Vidya revealed a couple of developments about the project. It was being planned as a web series instead of a movie, and was supposed to be helmed by Ritesh Batra of The Lunchbox-fame. “The Indira Gandhi web series is taking longer than I wish. They’re rewriting the script according to the web, and will soon come to me with the final version. Web is a different ballgame so it takes more time,” she said.

“I was offered the role five years ago also, by multiple people. But I told them as long as you don’t get the requisite permissions, I can’t do the film. But it’s much easier in web,” Vidya added.

Vidya was also offered Thalaivi

In the same interview, Vidya revealed why she turned down the opportunity to play former Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa in Thalaivi, a biopic directed by AL Vijay. She said that since she was already gearing up to play Indira Gandhi on screen, she didn’t want to play two political figures of the same age too close to each other.

However, Kangana went on to play both Jayalalithaa and Indira Gandhi in Thalaivi (2021) and Emergency, respectively. Emergency is co-produced by Zee Studios and Kangana’s Manikarnika Films.