Atul Kasbekar is taking a wide-angled shot at success. He’s already an ace lensman, constantly sought after
for shooting celebrities and the country’s most beautiful models. If that isn’t enough, he’s also a key player in the tough, dog-eat-dog celebrity management business.

Now Kasbekar is hitting fresh highs after the runaway success of his first film, Neerja, that has been hailed by critics and given a firm thumbs up by audiences. And he’s upping the pace as a newbie movie producer and sifting through new scripts and making firm plans to start shooting in the not distant future.

Naturally, Kasbekar is ecstatic that Neerja, which everyone reckoned was a long shot, has paid off so handsomely. “There was a certain positive energy about the film. But now that the bar has been set high, we have to be cautious about the kind of films we make,” says the man who’s best known for his sensuous swimsuit calendars shot in exotic locales with bikini-licious models.

His lushly-framed photographs never give the slightest hint of the hard work and perseverance that have gone into creating that perfect shot. And his laid-back manner can be deceptive. But Kasbekar admits that he faced
giant challenges as a relatively new movie producer.

Kasbekar’s always been the star behind the lens in the glamour game, when the frame’s firmly focused on the country’s most sensuously beautiful models. But he didn’t want to start out in Bollywood with a formulaic film that was easy on the eye and the brain. He says Bollywood old-timers warned him against ploughing time and money into a movie with two women in key roles.

“Having been a photographer for more than 25 years, I have a certain amount of goodwill. So I could have put together a simple subject like a rom-com, for instance. But if you want to increase your credibility as a producer and make a mark, it’s important to put together a hard-hitting project that looks extremely difficult,” he insists firmly.

To be sure, his bet has paid off. Neerja was made on a modest budget of Rs 21 crore and has already grossed Rs 103.10 crore at the box office so far. The biopic, directed by adman Ram Madhvani, tells the story of flight attendant Neerja Bhanot and the 359 hostages on the hijacked Pan Am flight 73 on September 5, 1986.

“My business partner Shanti (Siva-ram) gave me as a seven-page story written by screenplay writer Saiwyn Quadras. The Bhanot family, who had refused to give permission to make a film for 30 years, had also given the rights to it,” recounts Kasbekar.

Kasbekar played a key role every inch of the way with director Madhvani. Together, they plunged into detailed research on the tragic hijacking and unearthed the tiniest details about the Pan Am flight. Then, with a meticulousness that’s unusual in Bollywood, they built a model of the aeroplane and  handpicked 250 people after long hours of auditions. It added up to a gruelling 32 days of shooting.

Says Madhvani: “A director’s job is to have a vision but what’s also very important is to have a team backing and
believing and protecting that vision. I’ve known Atul for many years and from the time he spoke to me about the story, I was clear I wanted to make this film. Now after steering this film together, I would definitely love to collaborate with him again.”

The photographer-turned-movie producer says his own role was to be like a symphony orchestra conductor. He says: “Both Ram and I had to keep these 250 people charged up and motivated every day for 12 hours. Since the rest of the cast playing the passengers had to sit through long hours of shooting, we had to give them pep talks every now and then so that they wouldn’t run away.”

Together, Kasbekar and Madhvani came up with unorthodox ways to keep the cast from flagging. Kasbekar even invited Bollywood celebrities from Aamir Khan to Vidya Balan and Anil Kapoor to drop in on the sets to encourage the cast. “I was more like Zubin Mehta making all the departments work harmoniously. One wrong note here and there could have led to a cacophony and not a symphony,” he says with a laugh.

After finishing Neerja, Kasbekar’s dying to take a long relaxing vacation. But he’s also zooming ahead as a producer. “I need a quick break before getting back to production in full force,” he says.

Already, he has his hands full with four different subjects. “It’s still too early to talk about these films,” he says. While one of them will be helmed by Madhvani, the rest are still in scripting stage. His strategy is simple. He says: “I want to make good films that I am proud of. I need to be happy doing what I do. And I want to try out all kinds of genres from war to horror to thrillers.”

But then, Kasbekar has always sought new panoramas for himself. Of course, photography remains his first love even after 22 years in the glamorous world of showbiz. So where does fashion photography exist in his current scheme of things? He says with a laugh: “That’s one thing I cannot be bored about. I forget the universe when I am clicking pictures.” He adds: “While being a producer is fun and is a fantastic learning curve, in fashion photography, you are only answerable to yourself. And you have a smaller team to control — just the model, stylist and photographer.”

Indeed, over the years, Kasbekar has taken all kinds of images, shooting everyone from movie stars like Shah Rukh Khan to cricketing icons like Sachin Tendulkar to corporate bigwigs like Gautam Singhania. The sensuous Kingfisher calendar, which he has shot for 13 years, quickly emerged as the place to watch for new faces from Katrina Kaif to Deepika Padukone to Nargis Fakhri. So what’s his trade secret? He says with a laugh: “The X-factor is what the camera does to you.”

Then, there’s also his celebrity management company, Bling Entertainment Solutions, which he set up in 2007 (after exiting an earlier one called Matrix). Bling represents A-list celebrities like Abhay Deol, Sonam Kapoor and Vidya Balan. “Our focus is to strike the right deals for our clients,” says Kasbekar.

In fact, Bling led him to his first foray into film production when he helped his friend Dia Mirza put together her first film as a producer, the Vidya Balan-starrer Bobby Jasoos, in 2014. “My company manages both Dia and Vidya. Since the movie’s content was strong, I helped Dia in realising her vision as a producer and we co-produced it,” he says.

And as for photographing those leggy beauties, Kasbekar says: “For a swimsuit model, it’s the legs that make the cut. To focus on the sensuous sides, I try to focus on their eyes. I hate clichéd looks and prefer a slightly quirky face with an athletic body.”

Indeed, Kasbekar recalls how he first conceptualised the Kingfisher calendar that has made him famous, drawing inspiration from the famed Pirelli calendar. He discussed his idea with liquor baron Vijay Mallya, and in short order, he packed his bags for Mauritius, shooting the first Kingfisher calendar with models like Katrina Kaif, Shivani Kapur, Ujjwala Raut and Yana Gupta.

Ever since, he has shot for it in beautiful global hotspots from Turkey to South Africa to Udaipur. Most recently, he shot the 2016 calendar on the pristine beaches of Seychelles like La Digue and Anse Louis. (The shoot went ahead even though Kingfisher has been mired in financial woes).

“I like the energy of a new place,” he says. At Seychelles, he recounts how the weather played havoc from the moment he and his crew landed, giving them just one day of proper sunshine and a few hours for the entire shoot.

Kasbekar says that as a photographer, his working style is simple: he doesn’t like to talk too much to his
celebrities about their professions. He says: “While shooting, I ensure that my client is comfortable. I talk about things that interest them. On a regular day of shooting with my celeb clients, I play many roles from that of a jester to a friend to a listener. By bonding with them, I make them open up and feel at ease in front of the camera.”

He’s also a perfectionist to the core and is known to reject several ideas if they don’t meet his exacting standards. “I’m only bothered by incompetent, lazy liars,” says Kasbekar. He’s also super-hardworking, and starts his day early. “No matter what time I sleep at night, I wake up by 7. From 7 to 8, I am in a digital detox. My day starts at 10.30 am in office and after that it’s a crazy schedule,” he says.

That covers his work as a photographer and also with Bling, where his wife Vandana, who’s also one of its
directors, manages the day-to-day show. The couple has two grown-up fraternal twins, Naomi and Arnav. “They’re not much into photography, but we bond with sports,” says Kasbekar, who’s especially passionate about football, which he played keenly  at Mumbai’s Campion School. Now, he keeps close tabs on every Arsenal match and watches at least one game in London each year.

Of course, Kasbekar didn’t start out thinking he’d be a photographer. He first set out to study chemical engineering. But while he excelled academically, he soon realised that he wasn’t cut out for academics. So he dropped out and enrolled for a three-year programme at the Brooks Institute of Photography in the US, which he topped in 1988.

While in the US, he got an opportunity to work with ace lensmen like Jay Silverman and Ron Slenzak. Then, after returning to India to set up his own studio in 1990, he quickly landed high-profile assignments like the catalogue shoot of the famous Mumbai store, Sheetal, as well as ad campaigns for brands like Park Avenue and Vadilal. But he credits the famous photographer Gautam Rajadhyaksha for giving a kick-start to his career. “When I met him, he agreed to talk to my father and told him that there was life beyond engineering,” recounts Kasbekar.

For now, though, he has turned the lens on filmmaking and is excited about the whole process of film production. He says: “There’s so much to do now and that challenge keeps me going. Films, like photography, are very people-oriented and that’s what appeals to me.”