Aamir Khan’s biopic on cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma titled ‘Salute’

After ‘Dangal’,Aamir Khan’s’s next biopic will be on Indian cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma and is titled “Salute”, as per a report in a leading Indian daily.Rakesh Sharma is the first Indian to go on a space mission abroad the Soyuz T-11, which carried the crew to the Salyut 7 space station.

There were speculations that the film’s title might be ‘Saare Jahan Se Achcha’, as when then prime minister of India Indira Gandhi asked him how India looked like from the outer space, he had replied with the same phrase, which means, ‘the best in the world’.

The film will be produced by Siddharth Roy Kapur and directed by Mahesh Mathai, who is a known name in the field of advertising. “Siddharth had approached Aamir with the script of his last film (Dangal) and this time too he went straight to him. The 2018 film will be made under his newly-launched bannerRoy Kapur Films. It will be directed by Mahesh Mathai,” the report quoted a source as saying.

A graduate of National Defence Academy, Rakesh Sharma was a pilot in the Indian Air Force. He was chosen to go into space as part of a joint programme between the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the Soviet Intercosmos space program. Along with erstwhile USSR’s Yury Malyshev and Gennadi Strekalov, Sharma spent 7 days 21 hours and 40 minutes aboard the Salyut 7, conducting studies and experiments.

Aamir, rightly called Mr. Perfectionist, had already begun preparing for the character even before signing the film. He is currently busy with his next project ‘Thugs of Hindostan’, for which her will collaborate with megastar Amitabh Bachchan for the first time. The film, an adaptation of Philip Meadows Taylor’s novel ‘Confessions of A Thug’, set in India in 1832, will be produced by Yash Raj Films and directed by Vijay Krishna ‘Victor’ Acharya of ‘Dhoom’ fame.