Dhurandhar: AI Tools & VFX Tech Behind the Film

Table of Content

• Recreating Karachi: Where Production Design Met Digital Technology
  
• The VFX Studios for Dhurandhar
  
• Action and Motion Capture Directors: 4 Specialists
  
• Cinematography & AI Colour Grading
  
• Post-production: Editing Seven Hours down to a Duology
  
• Conclusion
• FAQs

Dhurandhar may very well be one of the most technically audacious films Bollywood has ever seen. When Dhurandhar released on December 5th, 2025, directed by Aditya Dhar and grossing more than 1,350cr globally, it became the biggest Indian film of 2025. Its sequel, Dhurandhar 2: The Revenge- released in March 2026, had earned over 1,000cr in just a single week, thus making the duology the highest-grossing Indian film franchise.

However, the gritty streets of Karachi were recreated in Bangkok, and the subsequent bloody action sequences and state-of-the-art CGI were far from chance occurrences. A massive production pipeline combined practical filmmaking techniques with contemporary AI tools, CGI, and advanced post-production methods in order to produce each of the visuals you see in Dhura-ndhar, the most technically audacious film Bollywood has ever produced. This is the story behind the making of one of Bollywood's greatest achievements.

Recreating Karachi: Where Production Design Met Digital Technology

• The setting of Lyari town, a place in Pakistan, was rebuilt on a six-acre plot in Bangkok, Thailand, by production designer Saini S Johray.
• Other Pakistan-set scenes were built on Ludhiana locations, Mumbai Film City, and Madh Island.
• CG compositing was used to add skyline, crowd density, architecture, and a Digital environment extension to the real, physical sets.

This technique, which combines large practical sets with CG environment augmentation, is basically a standard modern VFX workflow where elements shot on greenscreen can be seamlessly combined with AI Compositing into a digital environment, a location unfilmable in the real world.

To know more about the plot and the cinematography in detail, visit the detailed page on dhurandhar.

The VFX Studios for Dhurandhar

R2VFX Studios and 300+ VFX Shots

When it came to the VFX for Dhurandhar: The Revenge, it was a large project. Working together with B62 Studios, R2VFX Studios (a VFX, CGI, and AI content studio based in Mumbai) was tasked with creating more than 300 VFX shots for the film.

What's notable here is that R2VFX specializes in:

• cinematic visuals, compositing, CGI, and post-production solutions, and is also a TPN+ Gold Approved facility (which guarantees the most secure delivery of quality content)
•  They employed AI-assisted compositing to merge location footage, action stunts, and CGI images and integrate them seamlessly to create flowing action sequences
• Both films utilized the AI technology as part of their environment cleanup, crowd replication, and set extension tasks, a common application of AI in today's VFX industry

Action and Motion Capture Directors: 4 Specialists

There wasn't just one director of action working on this film, but 4; specialists in action design from varied backgrounds: Aejaz Gulab, Sea-Young Oh, Yannick Ben, and Ramazan Bulut. The film was created with each of them being assigned their specific style of action because it was thought that the scale of the film meant action couldn't feel the same from shot to shot.

Each action director used various methods and technologies:

•  Previs: AI software to help directors and stunt co-ordinators digitally preview action sequences before being carried out. This minimizes risk on set and aids in detail and precision.
• Wire Removal: AI software for the post-production phase, which would detect and remove safety wires attached to actors during the film without frame-by-frame removal.
• Motion Smoothing: Stabilization software used for handheld shots and chases in order to provide clean imagery whilst maintaining the visceral style of handheld footage.

Cinematography & AI Colour Grading

• Cinematography by Vikash Nowlakha, with a rough and grubby aesthetic - the camera intended to convey the feeling of undercover operations, night shoots, back streets, and furtive actions.
• To make that consistent look across seven hours of raw footage, shot across Thailand, Ladakh, Mumbai, Punjab, and Himachal Pradesh, AI-assisted colour grading software was put to use.
• Machine learning-based grading software, reading the light conditions across different locations, automatically adjusted colour corrections to achieve a uniform look.
•  Neural network-driven shadow and highlight recovery tools helped restore details captured in harsh lighting situations during night shoots.

Post-production: Editing Seven Hours down to a Duology

Aditya Dhar's film-  dhurandhar had shot approximately seven hours of footage. This was decided in post-production in October 2025, that the sheer scope of the film could not be distilled down into a singular feature film format.

Working and editing seven hours of footage involved:

• AI-powered review of dailies: ML algorithms filter takes based on technical quality, such as clarity, focus, consistency in performances, before editors are asked to review the footage
• Automated scene grouping: AI editorial software will tag and group material by character, location, and scene number, saving time spent trawling through unused raw footage
•  Automation of sound: The AI was used to separate the different layers of sound in complex action sequences filmed in many locations: dialogue, sound effects, and music were given as separate tracks to sound designers.

Conclusion

Proof of how far Indian filmmaking has come, Dhurandhar is the realization of a vision. It is this convergence of practical, large-scale set building, AI-enabled visual effects pipelines, a multi-expert action direction team, and ML-assisted post-production techniques that has enabled the creation of a film as large as this, and with such clear artistic ambitions. So if the audiences who watched Dhurandhar marvelled at how Karachi was erected in Bangkok, how hundreds of shots were created and implemented seamlessly, how seven hours of content turned into two films – this production technology stack rivals any from Hollywood in scale. Technical accomplishments and box office are equal partners.

FAQs

Q1.Which VFX studio has worked on Dhurandhar?

It was R2VFX Studios from Mumbai, they have executed over 300 visual effects shots for the second Dhurandhar on assignment with B62 Studios.

Q2.Has Karachi been filmed in Pakistan?

 The entire Lyari district of Karachi has been re-created on a six-acre set built in Bangkok (Thailand) and the rest of the Pakistan action scenes have been shot in Mumbai and Ludhiana (India).

Q3.How many action directors have worked on Dhurandhar?

Aejaz Gulab, Sea-Young Oh, Yannick Ben, and Ramazan Bulut were brought in as four action directors, each responsible for their own sets of action set pieces in the two part thriller with four separate actions directors choreographing action sequences.

Q4.How many hours has Dhurandhar been shot in?

 It has been shot for around 7 hours of film which will then be split into two parts in post-production in October 2025.

Q5.What director of photography was involved with Dhurandhar?

Vikas Nowlakha has been responsible as director of cinematography. The high contrast gritty and suitable visual textures were produced by him for a spy thriller story.