{"id":673727,"date":"2026-11-11T17:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T17:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/673727\/"},"modified":"2026-11-11T17:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T17:10:08","slug":"anshuman-jha-sarah-jane-dias-on-lakadbaggha-2-the-monkey-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/673727\/","title":{"rendered":"Anshuman Jha & Sarah Jane Dias On ‘Lakadbaggha 2: The Monkey Business’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDeadline\u2019s Local to Global series touched down in Bruges, Belgium, last week where we sat down with actor-director Anshuman Jha<\/a> and actress Sarah-Jane Dias to discuss their upcoming Indian action title Lakadbaggha 2: The Monkey Business<\/a>. The film, which had its world premiere at the Razor Reel Flanders Film Festival where it was the runner-up for the Audience Choice Award, is the second instalment of Jha\u2019s franchise and intersects local Indian mythology with indigenous martial arts all while advocating for animal conservation.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe project is produced by First Ray Films and Matta Cinema and follows Arjun Bakshi (Jha) who, weeks before his wedding, is shattered when his fianc\u00e9e (Dias) disappears while on a mission in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. Her trail leads to a deadly island where an underground fight tournament hides the auction of the last surviving Yaki monkey \u2013 forcing Arjun to fight not just for love, but for a life that cannot speak for itself.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI feel that animals are going extinct because humanity is going extinct,\u201d said Jha. \u201cSo, the next evolution of heroes or \u2018superheroes\u2019 is going to be somebody who\u2019s not more powerful, but somebody who will have a lot more compassion. Being ordinary is the real superpower and that was the root of the birth story of Arjun Bakshi.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first instalment of the Hindi-language franchise sees vegan Arjun travel to Kolkata where he turns into a vigilante after discovering an illegal underground animal trade syndicate. The latest film heads to Indonesia, where it puts a spotlight on the Yaki Monkey, whose population has been reduced from 50,000 in1990 to 4,500 today. \u201cThis is a real-world problem,\u201d said Jha. \u201cI feel films need to not just entertain but also have a voice, especially for those who are voiceless and this story is in essence about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIndia has a rich martial arts heritage, particularly through Kalaripayattu, also known as Kalari, which Jha says has rarely been conveyed on screen.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are the second biggest film industry in the world, so technically there should be more films featuring this,\u201d he says. \u201cThe effort was to bring a very 1980s pulp action genre fan to the screen. I\u2019m a huge Bruce Lee fan. He\u2019s had a huge influence on my life and a lot of who I am, what I believe in and how I live goes in alignment with the principles of martial arts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDias noted the film\u2019s unconventional approach to portraying an action hero: \u201cQuintessentially, when there is fighting in a film, it\u2019s over love or someone wanting to take over the world or they are some dark force, but I have never seen it done to protect animals or the environment, especially in a superhero action film and I think that\u2019s actually really unique.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJha worked with master fight choreographer Kecha Khamphakdee, who is behind the iconic fight scenes in Ong-Bak, to design the combat scenes in the latest film. Ong-Bak\u2018s Dan Chupong plays the antagonist in the film.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen pressed about the challenges of Indian films traveling outside its own borders, Jha stressed that he was conscious of this when making the film and hopes it\u2019s a story that Western audiences can embrace because of its universal themes and the fact that it\u2019s an atypical Indian independent film.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI want this film to travel the world,\u201d says Jha. \u201cI feel like there\u2019s an emotional quotient \u2013 EQ \u2013 and there\u2019s cinema quotient. I think because we have 1.6 billion people in India, sometimes as filmmakers we get very happy with just what we have. The truth is, there are 5.4 billion people outside of India. So, there\u2019s a huge audience out there and the cinema quotient of audiences outside of India is very different from the inside of India.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTake a look at the full conversation in the video above.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Deadline\u2019s Local to Global series touched down in Bruges, Belgium, last week where we sat down with actor-director…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[18722,303043,146,85,46,303044,397,303045,272018],"class_list":["post-673727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-anshuman-jha","tag-deadline-from-local-to-global","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-lakadbaggha-2-the-monkey-business","tag-movies","tag-razor-reel-festival","tag-sarah-jane-dias"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}