- By Parina Taneja
- Thu, 09 Jul 2026 11:39 AM (IST)
- Source:JND
Bollywood movie IKKA has been making waves online for reuniting two powerhouses of talent, Sunny Deol and Akshaye Khanna, after nearly three decades. Arriving on Netflix on July 10, the legal thriller drama has caught eyes for promising an intense courtroom battle with high stakes and raw emotions. Additionally, IKKA marks the much-talked-about OTT debut of Sunny Deol.
It is not wrong to say that with the multi-talented star cast including Dia Mirza and Tillotama Shome alongside Sunny and Akshaye, IKKA is shaping up to be a masterclass in casting. In an exclusive conversation, the director Siddharth P. Malhotra revealed how a dream script, carried through years of near-misses and countless narrations, finally found its soul.
According to Malhotra, bringing together four vastly different powerhouses like Sunny Deol, Akshaye Khanna, Dia Mirza, and Tillotama Shome wasn’t about assembling star power, but finding the raw emotional truth of the characters.
He said, "What excited me most was that every one of these actors brings something completely different to the table, and IKKA is the kind of story that needs exactly that. I’ve always believed that casting isn’t about finding stars for roles; it’s about finding the soul of the character."
"With IKKA, because the film has lived with me for so many years, I knew these characters intimately. I knew their fears, strengths, vulnerabilities and contradictions. So when we started putting the cast together, it wasn’t about assembling a great ensemble—it was about finding the right people who could bring these characters to life. "
Akshaye Khanna, Dia Mirza and Sunny Deol from the movie IKKA (Image:Instagram/netflix.in)
Talking about managing the clashing energies of these iconic actors, Malhotra said, "What made it particularly exciting was that these actors come from very different schools of performance. Their processes are different, their preparation is different, their energies are different. But somehow, when they came together, they elevated one another."
Singing praises for Sunny Deol, IKKA director said that he was a dream to work with for his role of the lawyer. "There is an innate honesty, strength and emotional truth that he brings to the screen. Audiences see the larger-than-life star, but what I was interested in was the human being underneath. At the heart of IKKA is a man driven by love, loyalty, family and conviction, and Sunny Sir brought all of that with extraordinary sincerity."
Similarly, Malhotra claimed that he was impressed with Akshaye Khanna's intelligence as an actor that helped his character in IKKA. He said, "He doesn’t just perform a scene; he dissects it, understands it and finds layers that you may not have even considered. He keeps you on your toes as a director because every choice he makes is thoughtful and precise."
Watching Akshaye Khanna and Sunny Deol share screen space once again in the Bollywood movie IKKA is one of the great joys, not just for the director but for their fans as well.
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For the director, he claimed that he couldn’t have imagined a better group of actors to bring it to life. "In many ways, they didn’t just perform the characters—they enriched them, challenged them and made them far more layered than what existed on the page."