Imran Khan is glad his spy series with Hotstar got canned: ‘Don’t want to play a guy who solves problems with a gun’

Actor Imran Khan is genuinely considering making an acting comeback, but has not found the right project yet. In a new interview with Film Companion, Imran revealed that a spy series with Disney+ Hotstar was in the works but it got canned, something that he is actually glad about. (Also read: Imran Khan recalls unusual encounter with a fan in London, who asked him to park her car)

The shelved spy series

Filmmaker Abbas Tyrewala was making the series, but the project was discarded after Hotstar’s Jio takeover last year. When host Anupama Chopra said that she wanted to watch the series, Imran said, “All things said and done, I am kind of glad that ended up not coming together.” When asked why, Imran took a big sigh and said, “I don’t want to play a character who solves problems with a gun.”

Fetishizing violence

He then spoke in detail about what he dislikes about recent spate of movies that show gore and violence without any consequence. “There is glamourisation and a fetishisation, sexualisation, of violence that makes me uncomfortable,” he said. Imran clarified that he always loved action moves as a teen in the ’90s. “There is a way to portray violence and this is not a morality thing. Violence and action is a language within cinema and when we portray in films there is a way to do it where you feel the weight of it,” he added. Imran gave the example of Todd Phillips’ 2019 movie Joker and how one could feel the horror when Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck stabs a man.

“We’ve started making films where heroes will go and boom boom boom shoot seven people in the heads and their heads would explode to music. They make it cool and sexy and it makes me uncomfortable,” Imran said.

While Imran did not name any film as an example, recent Hindi movies such as Animal and Jawan have had such depiction of violence.

Imran was last seen in Katti Batti with Kangana Ranaut in 2015. He has been on a break from films since then. Imran said in the same interview that he has been reading a bunch of scripts, but nothing caught his fancy yet.