Indian filmmaker Prashanth Neel is reframing expectations for “Dragon” – his NTR-starring action film targeting a June 2027 release – as his most ambitious patriotic statement to date, while confirming that a “Salaar” sequel will go into production the moment it wraps and revealing plans to eventually step away from large-scale action for a mythological series he has spent roughly two decades developing.
“This is probably going to be our biggest attempt at making a patriotic movie,” Neel tells Variety.
The promotional glimpse – released on the eve of NTR’s birthday and viewed more than 49 million times within two days – officially unveiled the title and laid out the film’s historical and criminal scaffolding. It constructs a premise in which British colonial rule in India was fundamentally sustained by control of the opium trade, with the British commanding 95% of the global market through Afghanistan and the Golden Triangle. In the film’s telling, the British exit from India in 1947 fractured that empire into two warring factions – the Afghan Trading Company and the Golden Trading Company – igniting the conflict at the story’s center.
Reshoot rumors that had circulated ahead of the glimpse are unfounded, Neel says. The production took time off to allow NTR to build his physique without CGI assistance. “They’re just rumors. We never reshot a single scene till now. The only reason we took some time off was because he wanted to be authentically fit for the movie without any CGI. He wanted to build a body,” he says, while also negating rumours of “Dragon” being a spy film.
NTR plays Luger – named after the German Luger PP 08 pistol – an assassin sent to Afghanistan at the age of 10 in 1947 and trained to serve as the Afghan Trading Company’s chief enforcer. Neel describes the character as the most morally complex he has attempted, drawing a parallel to audience responses to Pablo Escobar in the TV series “Narcos.” “We are trying to portray a very, very negative character, but a character that you understand why he’s negative,” he tells Variety.
Childhood is the emotional engine Neel returns to across all his films, and “Dragon” is no exception. Rooted in the 70s Hindi-language cinema he grew up watching – films that invariably opened with a protagonist’s formative years – his approach holds that character is fixed in childhood and largely immovable thereafter. “My childhood basically becomes my biggest emotion in my movies,” he says, “and in ‘Dragon’ also it is my biggest strength.”
That emotional grounding is also what he says separates genuine elevation scenes from empty spectacle. “When you talk about an elevation scene, it always comes from drama,” Neel says. “If I am not invested in the drama, then I will not be elevated when I see what I see. It just cannot be a set piece.” The construction, he says, begins long before the payoff – laying what he calls bread crumbs early enough that the drama lands with full force when it arrives. The goal is a scene that functions like a song: something audiences return to.
The film marks a deliberate shift in directorial register for Neel. “This is the first time that I’m probably going to let my actors do the heavy lifting for me in the movie,” he says. “Dragon” extends the post-independence dystopian universe he has built across the “K.G.F” film and “Salaar,” though Neel frames it as distinct in intent – a story in which the patriotic dimension, obscured by the glimpse’s dark aesthetic, is central.
The broader ensemble includes Anil Kapoor, Biju Menon and Rukmini Vasanth, among others. Music is by Ravi Basrur, who scored both “K.G.F” instalments and “Salaar.”
On franchise prospects, Neel is measured. Any sequel will hinge on audience reception, and he says he will not assume goodwill on the strength of his previous films. The “Salaar” follow-up, however, is already scheduled. “That will happen immediately after the ‘Dragon’ movie is done,” he says. On “K.G.F 3,” he says he does not yet know when he will be able to turn his attention to it.
Once those obligations are met, Neel intends to leave this genre behind. He has been developing a mythological series for approximately two decades and wants to write and direct it before anything else. He also acknowledged a longstanding desire to make a small intimate drama that current commitments have kept out of reach.
On international release, Neel says any decision will follow an assessment of the finished film. “We cannot make better visuals than what the Hollywood people have made, but we can try and make a better emotion than what they have made,” he says. “We are making a very, very Indian movie, which can appeal to an international audience also.”
