Rahul Dholakia, who earlier directed Shah Rukh Khan in the gangster drama Raees, is all set to make a thriller based on the workings of Mumbai firefighters. Mumbai Mirror reports this story, which also mentions that Dholakia will be reuniting his Raees producers Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani, who will be producing the movie under their banner Excel Entertainment.

While the movie will be a fictional narrative, Dholakia will use inspirations from real-life incidents to make the movie authentic. The film will be about how a firefighter called Tukaram who motivates his team to take up SOS calls, no matter what the situation is.

Lamenting the lack of any good movie in Bollywood based on firefighters, Dholakia told Mirror, "For me, the firefighters are on par with cops and soldiers, but their heroics have gone largely unacknowledged even in a city of skyscrapers. They put their lives on the line every other day to put out and save us from fires which sometimes spark off from our own carelessness and violation of safety norms. They are also called to pull a child out of a borewell, rescue a kitten from the roof, clear an uprooted tree from the road and help during a building collapse or a deluge. Even during the 26/11 attacks they played a significant role in the rescues but went unheralded." He added this is the very reason that he wants to make a movie on them, as he continued, "A film like this offers plenty of scope for emotions and drama, action and visual thrills, with a larger-than-life protagonist at the centre, the surroundings and story-telling technique bringing in the realism."

Have to agree with Dholakia that there is a dearth of movies made on one of the city's life-savers. In Hollywood, we have movies like Backdraft, World Trade Center, The Towering Inferno, Ladder 49, Only the Brave. So looking forward to Bollywood rectifying this oversight asap!

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jul 30, 2018 09:14 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).