Vidyut Jammwal is about to make his Hollywood debut in Street Fighter, but his pitch is not that India has to catch up with the West. It is that the gap is narrower than it looks. Indian action crews, he argues, already draw on the same technicians as Hollywood. What separates the two industries, in his telling, is the freedom to take time.
Time, not talent
Speaking to PTI ahead of the film’s October 16 release in India, Jammwal said the dividing line is schedule, not skill. “What we shoot in 10 days, they shoot in four months,” he said. “The liberty of time, the luxury of spending too much time to create something is what they have that we don’t normally use.”
He pointed to S S Rajamouli’s Baahubali films as the change. Because those productions were given time, he said, “you can see the results.”
- Indian and Hollywood action productions often use the same technicians.
- The main gap is schedule: 10 days versus four months for comparable work.
- Longer timelines, as on Baahubali, show up on screen.
Playing Dhalsim
In Kitao Sakurai’s 1993-set adaptation, Jammwal plays Dhalsim, a yogi with fire-spitting abilities and a peaceful temperament who fights to support his family. The ensemble includes Jason Momoa, Noah Centineo, Andrew Koji, Orville Peck, Roman Reigns, Cody Rhodes, Andrew Schulz, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson and David Dastmalchian.
Jammwal said he had never played the video game and leaned on the director’s vision. Sakurai wanted him to “just play myself,” he said; because Dhalsim is a martial artist tied to Kalaripayattu, the actor’s training meant he did not have to build a new physical language.
A more planned machine
Working on a Hollywood production felt different because of how tightly planned it was. Jammwal recalled that after shoots he liked to rollerblade back to his hotel, but the legal team sent a letter warning that he could get injured. The point was not the rollerblading, but how much of the process is formalised in advance.
That planning, combined with time, is the real advantage he sees in the West. For Indian producers, the insight is not to copy a style; it is to protect enough schedule and preparation to let action scenes mature.
What comes next
Jammwal cast Hollywood as another step in a career that has already crossed Indian industries, citing his earlier Telugu and Tamil work. Street Fighter releases in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu on October 16. He also confirmed that he and Tiger Shroff are developing an action film and are looking for a director.
For readers who track Hindi cinema’s action lineage, Jammwal’s comments connect to a longer arc: from Amitabh Bachchan, Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee as his action icons, through the Commando and Khuda Hafiz films, and now into a Hollywood property built around a global game franchise. The test is whether the wider Indian action ecosystem gets the same time that Baahubali got.
Source: Hindustan Times
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