Akshay Kumar was very committed to `Special Chabbis`: Neeraj Pandey

Mumbai: Four years after he made his debut with the critically-acclaimed `A Wednesday`, director Neeraj Pandey is back with another thriller `Special Chabbis`, starring Akshay Kumar.

Akshay plays the lead in Pandey`s film, which is a fictionalised account of a real incident from the 80s. The director says that the `Khiladi` actor was committed to the movie as an actor and not as the superstar. "We had (Akshay) the actor and not the superstar in the film. Fortunately it was the actor who was coming on the sets. It was a terrific experience to work with Akshay as he gave his entire commitment for this project," Pandey said. The 45-year-old actor has been lucky as far as box office collections are concerned with his two films --`Housefull 2` and `Rowdy Rathore` -- crossing the golden Rs 100-crore mark last year. Ask Pandey if he made the film and did the casting with the target to enter the elite club, he said, "No nothing like that. When we started working on the project there was no number as such." `Special Chabbis` is based on a real incident in 1987 when 26 people, pretending to be officers of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), walked into a jewellery store in Zaveri Bazaar and walked out with jewelry worth lakhs. "I read a news article somewhere in 2000-01 of unsolved cases in Mumbai and this incident caught my eye for the reason that it was so cerebral in its execution," Pandey said. "After `A Wednesday` I was looking for a subject to develop into a script and this story line came back very strongly to me. I wrote the script and fortunately it turned out to be good and we decided to go ahead with it," he said. The director said it was quite challenging for him to write the film as it was inspired by a real life incident. "It is a tougher project in a way as compared to my earlier one. Every project has different challenges, this project had its challenges," he said. The film also stars Kajal Aggarwal, Jimmy Shergill, Manoj Bajpai and Anupam Kher and hits the screens on February 8. PTI