PremiumDhruva Sarja’s Martin to finally get completed; actor to return to set in mid February
The team of Martin has claimed that only the songs of the Dhruva Sarja-led film are pending, so hopefully, it will be done shortly
Last Updated: 05.53 PM, Feb 09, 2024
Dhruva Sarja’s fifth film as leading man, Martin, was launched way back in August of 2021 and was first thought to be a Dasara 2022 release along with Kantara and Ponniyin Selvan. Not only did the makers not make that deadline, but as of February 2024, the film remains incomplete. Almost a year ago, when OTTplay had spoken to director AP Arjun, he’d said that a release date could be announced only once the songs are shot.
At the time, though, Dhruva had already moved on to begin work on his next, KD-The Devil with Prem, a film for which he lost a lot of the muscle mass he had packed on for his more massive look in Martin. Arjun was bullish that gaining this weight and returning to the Martin shape was easy for the actor, who is a fitness fanatic anyway, and it seemed that the film would be completed in no time. It’s been months since and now we hear that Dhruva will return to the set of the film next week for the final leg of shoot.
It remains unclear how many more days of shoot is pending, but the fact that Dhruva will begin working on it again gives renewed hope that Martin will be in theatres after all. There was a buzz in industry circles at one point that all is not well between Dhruva and producer Uday K Mehta , owing to the delay in the film’s production. During his birthday celebrations in October last year, Dhruva was asked about this, but he claimed that there were no hard feelings between them.
Sources claim that Uday has allegedly incurred severe losses due to this delay and has been making hefty interest payments to his investors. Interestingly, Martin is a film based on a story by Dhruva’s uncle, Action King Arjun Sarja, so, one would think that he’d be invested in finishing it up quickly. The team had launched a teaser a year ago, at an event in Bengaluru for which they’d flown in journalists from across the country. But since then, there’s been radio silence on the status of the film.
Martin, meanwhile, also stars Vaibhavi Shandilya, Anveshi Jain Nikitin Dheer, Nawah Shah, Achyuth Kumar, among others. Ravi Basrur’s handling the background score, while Mani Sharma has the songs. Cinematography is by Satya Hegde.