Mumbai/Pune: philmCGI, one of India’s leading animation and visual effects studios and a TPN Gold-certified company, has played a key role in shaping the visual world of the Dhurandhar franchise. Widely regarded as a cultural phenomenon, the film highlights the studio’s ability to bring director Aditya Dhar’s vision to life with a deeply immersive experience, featuring over 1,000 VFX shots seamlessly integrated into the narrative.
Across Dhurandhar and Dhurandhar: The Revenge, philm CGI worked in close collaboration with B62 Studio’s core creative team from concept through to final delivery, with a clear focus on ensuring that the visual effects remained invisible. Taking a story-first approach, the studio prioritised authenticity and continuity, moving away from spectacle-driven treatment to deliver subtle, believable integrations that support the narrative.
Commenting on the success Anand Bhanushali, Founder and Managing Director at philmCGI said, “It has been an enriching experience collaborating with the team on a story that has resonated so strongly with audiences. Seeing viewers engage so deeply with the film’s world has been incredibly rewarding for us as storytellers. The film demanded a careful balance between scale, tight timelines, and a strict mandate for realism, with over 1000 shots delivered while ensuring the work remained completely invisible to the audience.”
Arpan Gaglani, Founder and Managing Director, philmCGI further added, “Achieving this required a strong pipeline, close collaboration across teams, and a clearly defined creative direction. Visual effects are most powerful when they remain unseen, quietly supporting the story without revealing the craft behind it. That thinking guided our approach throughout the film.”
philmCGI’s work on the film spans complex environment extensions, simulations, compositing, and detailed visual enhancements, all designed to integrate seamlessly with live-action footage. The team handled multiple high-complexity sequences simultaneously, balancing scale with continuity across scenes that demanded consistency in tone, texture, and lighting.
A key example is the ‘Lyari Set’, where scale and texture were central to storytelling. The studio extended and enhanced the environment through detailed world-building, set augmentation, and refined compositing, creating a dense, lived-in setting that feels authentic on screen while remaining imperceptible to the viewer. Much of this work had to align precisely with live-action plates, requiring frame-level accuracy to ensure the environment felt grounded and cohesive.
To meet the scale and delivery speed, philmCGI used its proprietary production pipeline and in-house AI-assisted workflows. This enabled the team to optimise efficiency while maintaining creative control and consistency across all shots. The integration of AI-assisted processes helped streamline repetitive workflows, allowing artists to focus more closely on creative precision and narrative detail.
The studio’s contribution has also been recognised at the Zee Cine Awards, where it won Best VFX, and at the Screen Awards 2026, where it won Best Special Effects, further reinforcing its position as a trusted partner for large-scale cinematic storytelling.
Looking ahead, Philm CGI is investing in AI-led workflows and next-generation pipelines to shape how future stories are imagined, built, and experienced on screen.
