‘Casino’ is an upcoming Bangladeshi movie, directed by Saikat Nasir, that continues the recent theme of gambling and traditional casino in movies and TV shows in South Asia, particularly in India. It was scheduled to be released in mid-2020 but has been delayed so far due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This has been a movie that has been in development for quite a while, even though the actual idea was made into a full-fledged screenplay and script quite quickly. Director Saikat Nasir began working on it in June 2019, when Abdullah Jahir Babu and Asad Jaman began writing the script and screenplay for it. Nasir was also quite sure of who he wanted as the main lead, talking with Nirab Hossain during this time as well. By November 2019, the rest of the cast was confirmed, and filming began later that month.
The majority of filming took place at the Bangladesh Film Development Corporation sets, while Bali was chosen as the location for filming the songs in the movie. The crew managed to wrap up 80% of filming within a month, while principal photography was completed by March 2020, showing how efficient and quick they were. However, due to the pandemic, the movie could not be released theatrically, and so had to be put on hold for the moment, in line with how most of the film industry has been the world over.
This is one of the first films to come out of the Bangladeshi film industry that is based completely on the casino industry, while its neighbor, India, has also seen a huge rise in interest in gambling, which has led to quite a few movies and TV shows based on gambling in Bollywood as well. However, they are just beginning to catch up with other movie industries globally, where this has been quite a popular theme for filmmakers to base their content on. Thus, we will now look at some of the best and most famous movies based on gambling, to give people an idea of the content they should be looking for in this genre.
Casino Royale (2006)
Even though it is a Bond movie, Casino Royale is also a very good example of a movie where the central theme revolves around gambling, a game of poker, in this instance. Bond, newly given his 007 licenses, travels to the Casino Royale in Montenegro to try and beat criminal mastermind Le Chiffre at a high-stakes game of poker, to deny him the money he sorely needs to keep his creditors off his tails. It is a classic of the genre and is widely thought of as one of the best Bond movies of all time.
Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
The entire Ocean’s series is probably one of the best casino heist movie series of all time, but Ocean’s Eleven probably was the best of the bunch. Featuring a heavy-duty star cast, with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Andy Garcia, Matt Damon, and Julia Roberts, to name just a few, Clooney and Pitt lead a gang of robbers to hit the Bellagio, the MGM Grand, and The Mirage - three of the biggest casinos in Las Vegas, for the biggest heist in history. They are all owned by Terry Benedict (played by Garcia), and the movie deals with whether they manage to be successful, while the other two movies deal with the fallout of this heist and its consequences.
21 (2008)
21 was a brilliant example of showing how gambling is basically underpinned by mathematics at all times, and how it may be possible to beat the system if you know your odds. Kevin Spacey plays the role of a mathematics professor, who recruits a bunch of extremely intelligent, and also somewhat desperate students, to use their mathematics and card-counting skills during a trip to Las Vegas to make hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, they come under the scanner of law enforcement, while they also get entangled with some unsavory characters as they get blinded by the money, and the movie shows how greed can have a lot of bad results if left unchecked.
Thus, these are some of the best movies based on gambling, which should show fans what to look for from their movie industries.
Comments