The first trailer for the Arun Gawli biopic Daddy was released in 2016. Produced by and starring Arjun Rampal as the Mumbai mob boss, the movie was being distributed by Eros Entertainment at the time. A swiftly cut montage of Gawli’s rise to infamy, the trailer promised a stylish and richly textured back story of one of the city’s most dreaded dons.
After Eros Entertainment backed out of the production, the release was put on the backburner. Daddy, as Gawli is known to his followers, is back with a new release date (July 21) and a tamer trailer. The new teaser is a more linear affair, setting the don’s rise in the context of the mill strikes of the 1970s and the ’80s. The second trailer bolsters Gawli’s self-mythologising, but still holds out the promise of an unconventional attempt by a celebrated experimental director to tackle the well-worn gangster biopic genre. Rampal’s resemblance to Gawli, who is not quite as photogenic as the Bollywood hunk, is uncanny.
Daddy will be released a week after Apoorva Lakhia’s Haseena, a biopic of fugitive don Dawood Ibrahim’s sister, Haseena Parkar (played by Shraddha Kapoor).